Ages ago, the closest I can think of is RHEL... but the closest I can think of is Debian.
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Hardest part would be "we will not chase latest trends" probably.
I'm also under impression that currently most contributions to the Linux kernel are functionalities that big tech needs. And they are direct benefitiaries.
> I'm also under impression that currently most contributions to the Linux kernel are functionalities that big tech needs. And they are direct benefitiaries.
This is the crux of the issue. I saw an article from 2020 where the "chief open source wonk" at microsoft was saying that the Linux kernel team needs to get past just using plain text email so that younger people would be more enthused about contributing.
Kill it with fire. I can't stand these corporate wankers.
The fact that people at microsoft are calling shots in the linux foundation is exceedingly alarming to me.
You are probably right.
Possibly it is just me who didn't want to see obvious facts. This is actually very sad because if I wanted to switch I have no choice:
OpenBSD is great and I love its simplicity but it has no reliable filesystem. I remember ext2 days and don't wanna go back.
FreeBSD has ZFS but no support for my gpu. Even if it had I see people having constant problems with their gpu kmods.
I've been daily-driving FreeBSD with OpenBSD on the side on my personal systems.
My Linux laptop is my nicest laptop, but gets the least use, because I enjoy the challenge of a new-to-me system.
In general, BSD has a very "linux in 2001" feel to it, for better or worse.
If you were using linux back then, you'll remember selecting motherboards and graphics cards based on their linux compatibility. That's basically where we're at with the BSDs.
A used thinkpad is almost always the best way to go for experimenting with the BSDs.
My x265 runs FreeBSD and NetBSD beautifully. Probably OpenBSD as well, I just haven't tried it.
@rl_dane @peteorrall until recently that was #Debian of course. These days I'm switching to #Devuan for cases where I really need Linux, but to #FreeBSD where I don't.
What changed recently?
@glitzersachen @rl_dane @peteorrall Debian got systemded. Supporting it as an option is fine. But then a couple of releases back it became compulsory.
@DrHyde @glitzersachen @peteorrall
And they won't even entertain the option of allowing different init systems.
@rl_dane @DrHyde @glitzersachen @peteorrall
😳 they won't? *sigh* 😔
@Tionisla @DrHyde @glitzersachen @peteorrall
Nope, there was a vote on it a year or two ago. It failed.
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@DrHyde @glitzersachen @rl_dane
I remember that and still viscerally recall the firestorm that broke out on the #Debian mailing lists.
I am not a fan of #SystemD. While I recognize that Linux's implementation #SysVInit needed replacing, SystemD was not the right solution.
Even if there is some kind of "correctness" to it, the design is not based on #empathy or nor did it improve upon the user experience. It is a case study in the failure of not using design thinking.
We went from:
service $SERVICE start
To:
systemctl start $SERVICE
Why couldn't it be:
start $SERVICE
Of course, the additional info when checking a service's status is valuable and certainly an improvement, HOW it was implement is my biggest criticism. Also, SystemD sprawl. Poettering's terrible attitude didn't help either.
@peteorrall @DrHyde @glitzersachen
I don't mind reversing the verb and subject order, but systemctl is way too similar to sysctl.
And I need to remind everyone yet again that systemd is not an init system. Systemd is not PID 1.
Systemd is a lot of things, PID1 is only one aspect of it. That's what concerns me.
I'm considering Devuan, MX Linux, and Antix.
But the Linux userspace will continue to break as more and more things depend on systemd.
All the while the systemd stans laugh and say things like "YoU dOn'T hAvE tO uSe SySteMd!"
@DrHyde @rl_dane @peteorrall
I really need to refamiliarize myself with #FreeBSD & friends. There are very few sane Linux distros (like #Devuan) left these days.
It's good to try BSD on an old thinkpad. I've got FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and am daily-driving them both.
It's not without compromises, hiccups, and rough edges, though.
Like you said. BSD. Add coreutils for the GNU
Ages ago, the closest I can think of is RHEL... but the closest I can think of is Debian.
I still love Debian, but the documentation is NOT there, and they're under constant horrendous pressure to adopt the latest systemd crap.
Part of Debian's documentation problem is internal culture. Thousands of maintainers and developers in a *highly* decentralized organizational structure with *no* enforced documentation standards. There's no single canonical handbook. Documentation is scattered across man pages, package descriptions, wiki, mailing lists, Debian Policy, etc. The Debian Handbook exists but isn't exactly maintained.
Another problem is Debian chooses to be neutral. By design, Debian doesn't have opinions, and relies on upstream. This also means there can be a bunch of different ways to solve X, but no one official way. For example, I wanted to build my own local Debian package mirror. Should be straightforward, right? Wrong. Debian has numerous active and deprecated tools in the main repo for this, but doesn't recommend any particular one. Instead, that is left up to the administrator.
But here's the catch: what if the administrator has never configured one before? How is someone supposed to learn? Debian offers no guidance whatsoever and leaves you to your own devices. This is just one example.
They have a ton of money in the bank but they choose *not* to spend it.
Please see:
https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/10/debian_project_address/
This article is old and I haven't been able to find more recent info.
That's interesting, and it makes sense. Debian is very, very old, has many old processes, and not nearly enough volunteers.
I remember a few years back listening to a podcast where an Ubuntu guy was being interviewed, and he said, "We really need all the people making Ubuntu forks to just stop and contribute to Ubuntu instead." I screamed in the car, "What about Debian you jerk?!?" 😁
#RHEL is a great enterprise server. Outside of that role it is mediocre. As a desktop, I'd run it if I had software which specifically required.
#Debian OTOH is what I run now as a daily driver. I enjoy it but for the "universal operating system" it's quite inaccessible and its documentation is substandard at best. Quite the paradox.
Makes sense. I have used RHEL since 1994... er, Red Hat then RHEL. However, about three years ago, I found that it kept lagging behind, so moved to Ubuntu. Next move for me will be Debian. However, just as you mentioned, documentation can be hard sometimes. At least Ubuntu has such an installed base that I can find almost anything there, but I like the simplicity of Debian.
Now you got me curious about SuSE.
@rl_dane @peteorrall
You are describing Arch Linux.
Although their recommendations are not super strong.
You have incredibly well documented choices at every turn.
It was the Linux most like free BSD almost 20 years ago when I needed Linux drivers.
Back then there was no installer. Only packages.
I still love Pacman and yay far more than any other distro's package manager.
Never ran Arch proper, but I ran a couple Arch derivatives that both burned my butt with grub updates breaking LUKS
Yeah, and I had it happen to me twice on the same box, in the same year.
I noped out of Arch derivatives after that.
Yeah, just a few months apart. XD
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@Zenie @rl_dane Years ago I tried Arch. This was probably around 5-10 years ago. It lasted at most 30 minutes post-install. My first reaction (after over a decade of Debian and several years of RHEL) wasn't just:
"OK, this is different."
It was:
"WTF is this?!"
...And that VM was promptly blown away. The Arch way, simply put, just does not jive with my brain.
There is one part of me that suggests I should try it again. There's another part of me, drained and annoyed by Linux's constant disorganization and lack of documentation, that suggests I just move to FreeBSD, where things are more sane, better organized, and documented.
@peteorrall @rl_dane
I don't know really. Arch is a lot more direct and barbones than Debian or rhel.
More like BSD. I started with Linux on Slackware in 93 when it was all just source code that had to be built.
I've used lots of Unixes, Rh, Suse, Debian, free BSD. Finally Arch since 2012 or something.
I never really liked Rh or Debian. Too heavy handed, installing too many things, puzzling configurations and too many opinions I object to. Also versioned releases that had a tendency to break. I like to know what my computer has installed and how it's configured.
Arch gives that transparency and the rolling release makes it feel like the BSDs.
The big difference is that the BSDs give you a stable base that's updated regularly, but not super frequently.
In Arch, everything gets updated constantly, there's no concept of a base system vs. ports/packages, and things can seriously break.
Immutable distros are something closer to BSD in that the base system doesn't change easily (although it's still HUGE compared BSDs' base).
@rl_dane @peteorrall
There is anch-lts. And I've never had anything break that wasn't explained beforehand. Not reading the release notes is probably a bad habit.
I guess if I had it to do over again, I'd just block grub from ever getting updated, or used something like rEFInd.
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Rolling releases are not for me. I don't just prefer stability, it's my priority. I need my computer to get work done. Predictability and reliability.
"Will patching my system break things?" is no question any user or sysadmin should be asking.
I am aware of the stable base in (Free)BSD. It's one reason why I keep coming back to it.
I think that's also what makes Fedora KDE a great starter distro for new users.
It's a relatively stable base (updated semiannually), but the KDE stuff is nearly rolling-release.
I would do backflips if Debian could go to an annual release schedule. Things get really long in the tooth just before each new version.
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I know there are ways of excising systemd from Debian, but it's more technical than I want to mess with right now.
@rl_dane @peteorrall
SystemD also has a nice alternative to grub.
However, if you are anti systemD, arch does have doc on the alternatives.
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@rl_dane Doesn't completely match your criteria but sounds like Chimera is in the ball park (BSD userland with Linux kernel). When I was shopping distros recently it was between Chimera and Alpine when looking for a stable, non-sysd experience that had a reasonable upgrade cycle. I ended up committing to Alpine but there wasn't much in it TBH.
I was looking at their install procedure a bit last year. I'll have to give it another go.
@rl_dane @peteorrall Chimera Linux @chimera could be of interest to you, it checks a few of those boxes (linux kernel, BSD uetland, musl libc, dinit)
@rl_dane @peteorrall why would anyone want to take over maintenance of GNU utilities… *shudder…*
Is the GNU code that messy?
I can't think of too many cases where I rely on the gnu utilities in FreeBSD. gawk has some features that regular awk doesn't have. guptime is kinda critical for FreeBSD laptops.
FreeBSD grep and ls have the --color options in imitation of the GNU equivalents, but OpenBSD doesn't.
I still prefer bash (particularly for interactive use), but I could use ksh/pdksh/mksh for scripting pretty easily, and have done so, here and there.
@rl_dane @peteorrall yes.
For example:
First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards, and NOT read it. Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture.
[Source]
It’s as illegible as DJB’s, but for different reasons.
And then their assumptions. It’s codified in the GNU project that bloat is better than “arbitrary restrictions”, while we know better these days (cue time limits on regexen, etc).
Dang, kernel.org has the most severe anubis setup I've ever seen. I've never seen a verification screen progress that slowly.
lol they lost me at 8 character tabs. 4 is the true path to nirvana.
> Now, some people will claim that having 8-character indentations makes the code move too far to the right, and makes it hard to read on a 80-character terminal screen. The answer to that is that if you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program.
Wha???
If they're going to be that severe, they should give people the option to just log in and avoid all that insanity.
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@rl_dane @peteorrall tabs are always at multiples of 8 columns (not characters)
What's the difference between columns and characters for monospace? Is it because some characters are double-width (emojis and such)?
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I want to introduce you to OxideOS. An atomic, immutable Nix-based distribution built entirely on Rust rewrites and the COSMIC desktop environment. It has all of the trendy stuff, like uutils and Zen-optimized kernel. Of course, it comes with Ghostty and Warp right out of the box.
Nix is pretty far outside what I've used before, but I'll look into it!
How is the documentation? That's usually my #1 complaint in the Linux world. There's so much "move fast and break things" mentality spillover from the corporate world that I think most distros have basically given up on documentation.
The Arch wiki is nice, but even that isn't sufficient for some sticky wickets I've encountered.
The "move fast and break things" mentality seriously needs to stop.
Yeah, especially since the "things" the techbros are trying to break is society itself. :/
I was kidding. 
That is all of the trendy things I could think of.
lol, you played me well. And I even stayed civil! 😂
@rl_dane @peteorrall isn’t that just the BSDs?
@mirabilos @rl_dane @peteorrall came here to say this 😂
@ianthetechie @mirabilos @rl_dane
https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD
Unfortunately this ended three years ago. I wish I had tried it sooner. Looked like an interesting project.
@peteorrall @ianthetechie @mirabilos
That's an interesting one, but kind of the opposite of what I would find interesting.
You should check out [Chimera Linux], which is the exact opposite: #FreeBSD userland on the Linux kernel.
They don't have an installer, though, last I checked. But they seem to have good instructions. I might try it some time. I know that @justine has used it before. =)
@rl_dane @peteorrall @ianthetechie @justine I did once have the idea of making a MirLinux though, due to having to, you know, earn money in the capitalistic system, never got around to doing so
@mirabilos @rl_dane @ianthetechie @justine
Not that I wanted to create my own Linux distro, but as a musician, years ago, wanted to sell Linux-based recording systems. Bundle the DAW with the audio interface and provide support. This was way too much for one person to take on and I am not a developer. It was also too ahead of its time, circa 2012 or so. ~14 years later, things are much different.
Linux support for audio interfaces is really lacking. This would have provided a less expensive and high performance alternative to both Windows and Mac.
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@rl_dane @peteorrall that sounds like openBSD
@rl_dane Sounds a bit like @alpinelinux
Alpine's kinda minimalist though, isn't it? Busybox and all that.
@rl_dane @spaceraser @peteorrall have you looked at #ChimeraLinux which has a #freebsd userland? You can get #xlibre for it if needed too.
I've heard of it. Haven't tried it yet, since it has a manual installation process, but hopefully I will.
@EF @rl_dane @spaceraser @peteorrall
Slackware is the way
@qwertz @EF @spaceraser @peteorrall
Why Slackware? I've never used it.
@rl_dane @EF @spaceraser @peteorrall
Because, if you want a Linux distro that has the attitude of a #BSD, #Slackware is for you. It's simple and use a BSD style init script and does not modify any packages; the software is practically all sourced from upstream.
It is no coincidence that it is defined as the most BSD of the distros 😄 (practically the oldest).
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@rl_dane Isn't that Slackware? @spaceraser @peteorrall
@steeph @spaceraser @peteorrall
Maybe? Never tried it, honestly don't know much about it.
@rl_dane
Why a linux at that point? For the driver support?
Yeah, driver/hardware support and stability.
I've had OpenBSD kernel panic on me when I was trying to probe for battery threshold settings, and FreeBSD will freeze when pulling up a heavy website, even on a (merely) not-quite ten-year-old laptop. 😅
I don't doubt that OpenBSD has way better security features than linux, and that the FreeBSD network stack can outperform Linux in many ways. But in my own (dinky) experience on nothing other than laptops, it hasn't been perfect.
That said, I've seriously loved the #BSD experience, and continue to daily drive (Free|Open)BSD on my personal machines. I only have one Linux laptop now, and while it's the nicest laptop I own, I use it the least.
Also, there are small things like KOReader not being available for FreeBSD, even though it's written in Lua and there's plenty of Lua support in FreeBSD. Also, OpenBSD (which, again, is amazing for what it is, and what they're wanting to concentrate on) still has no Bluetooth, nor any modern fs options. And I have yet to figure out how to get audio out of my headphone port on FreeBSD, let alone bluetooth.
I'd just love to see the #Linux community embrace the kind of OS-building that the BSD guys do every day, and not just ship an amalgam of disparate parts.
To say it in a meme form,
Me: "Why can't Linux be an OS, for crying out loud?"
Systemd: exists
Me: "No, no, no, not like that. 🫣"