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How usable are the BSDs as a GUI daily driver? Like 99% of Linux applications work out of the box or more like 50%? With new CVEs being discovered in ancient b

How usable are the BSDs as a GUI daily driver? Like 99% of Linux applications work out of the box or more like 50%? With new CVEs being discovered in ancient bedrock code on the daily, it seems prudent to switch to a NetBSD/OpenBSD/Qubes system for the next few years until some vulnerabilities might get smoothed over.

__patchbit__ 27d ago
NetBSD 11 with Firefox 151 from pkgsrc on a custom CTWM is a usable daily driver for Emacs daemon mode GUI/TUI and console tmux simultaneous use. Remote in from a Windows or macOS desktop.
- Bluestein 27d ago
  CTWM Claude's Tab Window Manager - https://www.ctwm.org/index.html https://www.ctwm.org/index.html
  - izabera 27d ago
    that's one confusing title in $currentyear...
    - Bluestein 27d ago
      It took me one serious doubletake ...
BSDobelix 27d ago
I use FreeBSD on all my machines for everything sinc about 11 years GUI is I3/X11/AMD-Card everything works, but please test it yourself, it's like with linux, you just know what's not/is working if you use it daily for all your edge-cases (maybe your scanner, maybe your barcode-scanner your Bluetooth-Stuff your wireless etcetc) Overall i really love FreeBSD for everything computing (Pi/Laptop/Workstation/Servers). And the community is great...wanna make a port/src-patch?...just send it to the bug-tracker, no rituals needed ;)
- Bluestein 27d ago
  I really wonder what will become of these systems once AI agents start intervening en masse - sending patches and the like.-
  - BSDobelix 27d ago
    they get accepted or rejected, updating ports/packets would be a wonderful AI job, check newest version, update port, poudriere the thing, test it, make patch, send to bugtracker. Maybe the AI can even check "funny" upstream commits like it happens with npm/crate and block that stuff. But FreeBSD ports is incredible up to date so there should be no flood of patches anyhow.
    - Bluestein 27d ago
      Indeed. This might be naive but it would be grand if projects could have their own models and compute with which to perform these and other tasks, each trained as per the project's ethos/needs.-
      - a2ff6eeb0 27d ago
        This is way too expensive. Models are an inherently centralizing technology, and there's no future for niche projects that don't make up a big part of the major providers training sets.
skydhash 27d ago
Running OpenBSD as a daily driver but with no DE. It has a working X11 with DRM from linux as base so everything graphical will work mostly fine. The issue is more around the OS and some subsystems. OpenBSD is still using the Giant Lock model, so SMP can be an issue. Linux has more independent subsystems so heavy processing is unlikely to impact usb audio (which is an issue I have with my oldish laptop). Another issue is the input subsystem (wscons framework) which is not as sophisticated as Linux Input subsystem. In general, linux subsystems are more sophisticated/complex than their OpenBSD counterpart, but the latter work well enough. There are some linuxisms in some applications (the recent moves to wayland/systemd,...) but they're mostly easy to port.
idatum 26d ago
The cross build tooling, specifically around build.sh, makes the process of building a kernel + userland straight forward. Use your best build hardware to build for your test hardware.
prmoustache 26d ago
Please define what "Linux applications" is first.
spauldo 26d ago
Depends on what you need. Software compatibility is mostly good, as long as it doesn't have a dependency on systemd or some other Linux-specific feature. Driver support varies, but FreeBSD in particular is pretty decent there. FreeBSD has a Linux compatibility feature that lets you run native Linux binaries. I've never used it so I can't say how good it is, though - all the stuff I use runs fine natively. The major BSDs have decent package management and sizeable repositories, with the option to build software (and customize compile-time options) using the ports or pkgsrc systems. You can also rebuild and customize the kernel and base system (aka "make world") but that's strictly optional these days. I seem to remember there was some GNOME stuff that had a hard systemd dependency and wouldn't run on the BSDs. That was a while back though and I don't run GNOME so I don't know whatever happened there or what the status is.
- andai 26d ago
  Do they run Wine?
  - spauldo 26d ago
    FreeBSD does, but I haven't tried it. It has its own chapter in the handbook. No idea about the others. I rarely need to run Windows binaries so I'm not the best person to ask.
  - vermaden 26d ago
    Not sure about NetBSD - but FreeBSD does WINE really well. Details: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/oldschool-gaming-on-freebsd/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/oldschool-gaming-o...

__patchbit__ 27d ago

NetBSD 11 with Firefox 151 from pkgsrc on a custom CTWM is a usable daily driver for Emacs daemon mode GUI/TUI and console tmux simultaneous use. Remote in from a Windows or macOS desktop.

Bluestein 27d ago
CTWM Claude's Tab Window Manager - https://www.ctwm.org/index.html https://www.ctwm.org/index.html
- izabera 27d ago
  that's one confusing title in $currentyear...
  - Bluestein 27d ago
    It took me one serious doubletake ...

BSDobelix 27d ago

I use FreeBSD on all my machines for everything sinc about 11 years GUI is I3/X11/AMD-Card everything works, but please test it yourself, it's like with linux, you just know what's not/is working if you use it daily for all your edge-cases (maybe your scanner, maybe your barcode-scanner your Bluetooth-Stuff your wireless etcetc) Overall i really love FreeBSD for everything computing (Pi/Laptop/Workstation/Servers). And the community is great...wanna make a port/src-patch?...just send it to the bug-tracker, no rituals needed ;)

Bluestein 27d ago
I really wonder what will become of these systems once AI agents start intervening en masse - sending patches and the like.-
- BSDobelix 27d ago
  they get accepted or rejected, updating ports/packets would be a wonderful AI job, check newest version, update port, poudriere the thing, test it, make patch, send to bugtracker. Maybe the AI can even check "funny" upstream commits like it happens with npm/crate and block that stuff. But FreeBSD ports is incredible up to date so there should be no flood of patches anyhow.
  - Bluestein 27d ago
    Indeed. This might be naive but it would be grand if projects could have their own models and compute with which to perform these and other tasks, each trained as per the project's ethos/needs.-
    - a2ff6eeb0 27d ago
      This is way too expensive. Models are an inherently centralizing technology, and there's no future for niche projects that don't make up a big part of the major providers training sets.

skydhash 27d ago

Running OpenBSD as a daily driver but with no DE. It has a working X11 with DRM from linux as base so everything graphical will work mostly fine. The issue is more around the OS and some subsystems. OpenBSD is still using the Giant Lock model, so SMP can be an issue. Linux has more independent subsystems so heavy processing is unlikely to impact usb audio (which is an issue I have with my oldish laptop). Another issue is the input subsystem (wscons framework) which is not as sophisticated as Linux Input subsystem. In general, linux subsystems are more sophisticated/complex than their OpenBSD counterpart, but the latter work well enough. There are some linuxisms in some applications (the recent moves to wayland/systemd,...) but they're mostly easy to port.

idatum 26d ago

The cross build tooling, specifically around build.sh, makes the process of building a kernel + userland straight forward. Use your best build hardware to build for your test hardware.

prmoustache 26d ago

Please define what "Linux applications" is first.

spauldo 26d ago

Depends on what you need. Software compatibility is mostly good, as long as it doesn't have a dependency on systemd or some other Linux-specific feature. Driver support varies, but FreeBSD in particular is pretty decent there. FreeBSD has a Linux compatibility feature that lets you run native Linux binaries. I've never used it so I can't say how good it is, though - all the stuff I use runs fine natively. The major BSDs have decent package management and sizeable repositories, with the option to build software (and customize compile-time options) using the ports or pkgsrc systems. You can also rebuild and customize the kernel and base system (aka "make world") but that's strictly optional these days. I seem to remember there was some GNOME stuff that had a hard systemd dependency and wouldn't run on the BSDs. That was a while back though and I don't run GNOME so I don't know whatever happened there or what the status is.

andai 26d ago
Do they run Wine?
- spauldo 26d ago
  FreeBSD does, but I haven't tried it. It has its own chapter in the handbook. No idea about the others. I rarely need to run Windows binaries so I'm not the best person to ask.
- vermaden 26d ago
  Not sure about NetBSD - but FreeBSD does WINE really well. Details: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/oldschool-gaming-on-freebsd/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2020/10/14/oldschool-gaming-o...