From macOS to FreeBSD | Hacker News Reader

From macOS to FreeBSD

boucek.me

215 pointssusam266 comments

I have tried FreeBSD and OpenBSD on the desktop a couple years back, but for a while now I've felt that they're becoming irrelevant.

* No Bluetooth support on OpenBSD at all, and it never worked on FreeBSD for me. Linux used to have issues with some devices, but it has gotten much, much better over the recent years (or devices have gotten better).

* Wifi on Linux mostly works out of the box nowadays (with the exception of some Broadcom chips, but even they are getting better). Completely different story on the BSDs, while they have decent support for some vendors like Intel, they take quite a while to support new hardware.

* Gaming is not really a thing on BSD.

* Container tech like Kubernetes and Flatpak does not work on the BSDs.

While Linux has taken a long time to catch up to Windows (and still isn't there yet in some areas), I feel like the BSDs lack the manpower or interest to even keep pace with the world around them. Not only are things not getting better, they are getting worse.

Came to say very similar things. Thanks for saving me this time.

> * Gaming is not really a thing on BSD

Sony has a different story to tell

It doesn't help you when you want to run BSD on your laptop or desktop.

This post is opaquely referring to the fact that the Playstation 4 os is based on FreeBSD. Obviously, this is interesting but irrelevant.

Sony also doesn't contribute much of that code back to FreeBSD.

did they contribute anything back?

I vaguely remember seeing something about them contributing some minor security patches or something token. The BSD license doesn't require them to of course, which was probably the whole reason Sony chose it.

just as the os under the ps3 and ps5

Related (and a fun watch!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiubC6LdTA

I moved from Mac to FreeBSD for my daily driver and I love it. But I use a desktop and don't use neither Bluetooth nor WiFi. Didn't even try to get them going.

FreeBSD does have container tech, in fact it had it before Linux did. It's just not the same tech, its jails are its own invention.

And gaming isn't really a thing on Mac either.

Ps I use all OSes under the sun. Windows for gaming, Mac for work, Linux for servers and FreeBSD for my main desktop. I don't really do laptops but I have a Windows 11 laptop from work too.

I'm not a serious gamer but the only computer gaming I do I do on my mac. Cities Skylines for example.

I spent hours upon hours in Stellaris as well.

M1 macs can take some light gaming pretty nicely actually.

I would agree with you, but my Steam library became almost entirely empty after the 64bit-only Catalina update.

> I feel like the BSDs lack the manpower or interest to even keep pace with the world around them

That's rich considering that one design goal of OpenBSD is to stay the same no matter what happens around it.

What I really like about *BSD is that things mostly stay the same, although there are examples of the contrary (ZFS adoption, DTrace in FreeBSD, pledge in OpenBSD). Both systems are stable, reliable and just get out of your way.

I totally respect that, but that's not how you stay relevant for anyone but old-school Unix hackers.

I'd say being actively used to run the largest streaming service on the planet makes you pretty relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o-HcG8QxPc

Possibly unpopular opinion but serving a lot of data via Ethernet is much simpler than creating a low latency modern hardware accelerated desktop with VR support and playing audio through my latest Bluetooth headset.

That’s another use case which works way better under somewhat modified FreeBSD (PlayStation) than under Linux.

simpler on paper sure. definitely not easy of course

I thought that was the point of things like OpenBSD.

I think that’s a feature of the BSD model. Almost every company making network appliances, etc uses BSD as a baseline, but they don’t necessarily contribute back or consistently drive development. I think the Linux model has better incentives.

The other thing is that the markets the BSD has been historically dominant are dying and consolidating. The world is cloud and cloud is mostly Linux.

What do you mean by 'the Linux model'?

GPL

Linux's cloud overcomplication will make the OS collapse into itself as Windows servers did long ago. People will switch to more simple systems.

I agree, and I think you’re starting to see that with the container spins of Linux.

I’d guess that in a 10 years, somebody will ditch ancient POSIX stuff and hardware support and do something new.

POSIX will be still around, because UNIX compatibility, but not necessarily on top of Linux.

It is already happening with the FOSS POSIX competition on IoT platforms anyway.

Yeah, they'll switch to another cloud that obscures the layers. We don't need to re-invent the wheel, we just have to make the wheel better.

Kubernetes is hardly ‘container tech’, but a cluster management and scheduling tool for large volumes of containers or VMs. FreeBSD has its own “container”-like feature called Jails, which was written by phk long before Docker / lxc / namespaces were a thing. For the ease of Docker’s CLI and config, use iocage; for cluster management like k8s, look at Nomad. It might not be as flashy and enterprisey as the Linux equivalent, but FreeBSD can easily compete with Linux in containers. Btw, combined with ZFS, Jails are just beautiful. iocage integrates directly with ZFS and creates snapshots before upgrades, data sets per container, shared data sets for base system etc. It’s really really nice.

That is interesting. I would like to hear more about jails and how they compare to containers on linux. This is the first time I’ve heard about nomad and I would like to here more. That the whole thing integrates with ZFS is news to me too.

It is sort of sad but BSD is bad at publishing news and tutorials. I wish there was something like lwn and the slew of endless tutorials to keep me up to date with what is going on in the BSD world. There is so little information or it is so hard to find for somebody in the Mac and Linux world that it might as well not exist at all.

And the thing is, if you “dev” on Mac or Linux and “deploy” on Linux, like a lot of us, you are a *NIX head and are interested in hearing what is new in the BSDs.

The FreeBSD youtube channel is great for long-form intros and talks, if you are curious: https://www.youtube.com/c/FreeBSDProject

https://www.freebsdnews.com/

Seems dead since beginning of last year. Any idea what happened.

> It is sort of sad but BSD is bad at publishing news and tutorials.

Say what?

https://www.freebsdnews.com/

http://undeadly.org/

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/

https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os

https://nostarch.com/catalog/linux-bsd-unix

https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/

Yea, I know of undeadly and read it off and on, freebsdnews too. I stoped reading undeadly a while ago when they had a rather long lull in publishing. From a post further down I take it freebsdnews has the same problem. I fallow DragonflyBSD off and on, since it is the BSD that interests me the most and they to suck at publishing info. I get more info out of a release note about whats changed than by fallowing DragonflyBSD Digest or reading the mailing list archives.

And publishing some books about the BSDs doesn’t really count as “tutorials”.

I don’t think you are getting my point. The comment I respondet to wasn’t just interesting, it gave me a reason to care about FreeBSD and maybe a reason to read freebsdnews and give FreeBSD a try. You need a place where people from outside of your communities can go to get informed enough to actually care enough to install a specific BSD and start reading their news digest.

The number one feature of Kubernetes is that you can extend it, there are almost no limits to what you can do in Kubernetes, it's a platform for platforms. Nomad doesn't compare. Your enthusiasm about ZFS is roughly how I feel about Kubernetes, and why "traditional" approaches seem pretty backwards to me now. ;)

I think you are downplaying kubernetes.

Nomad is very cool, as are most hashicorp creations, but it’s not in the same class. It’s a single vendor solution, has a lot less mileage on it, doesn’t have the same flexibility. It may very well solve your problem but I don’t know that it will work for as many as k8s does.

Really, someone should start to enable k8s with BSD technologies

Realistically, how many people / companies, in reality, need k8s? It’s a very complex solution geared at managing huge clusters. Sure, if you are Google or Netflix it makes sense. But for smaller deployments, I can’t see why less complex solutions cannot work. K8s is a great tool, but it’s very complex and has reinvented a lot of things, which traditional tools can do just as well.

DevOps people with K8s knowledge are much easier to find, and many companies don't want to reinvent the wheel.

Honestly, K8s is as complex as you need it to be. For smaller deployments it's working just fine too.

I used to say the same thing, but now that there is so much K8s knowledge out there, I think it's the wrong question to ask.

You probably don't need kubernetes, but if you already have a k8s cluster and someone who has done it,, with 10 to 20 minutes of work you can deploy your app/service in a highly available. Even if you don't have a k8s cluster yet, these days you can provision one easily without advanced levels of knowledge. Even just zero-down time deploys make k8s a good choice for a small shop. You basically get it for free with K8s.

Always wondered why anyone would use desktop on BSD.

Use stuff where it fits well for its purpose.

I use Windows only for gaming, Mac for development and Linux for servers where they excel at what they do.

Also I really don't get why BSD developers care to develop desktop environment with their limited resource but they should just concentrate on server offerings if they want to stay relevant besides having a more free license than Linux.

People say it’s Windows that excels for development (because of Visual Studio), and gaming on Linux is not a huge problem anymore. And BSDs (FreeBSD and Dragonfly, in particular) do excel on the server side. I’d agree that it’s still the Year of MacOS on the Desktop, although Linux is catching up pretty quickly (while Windows is receding into sheer madness).

Gaming on Linux is as bad as it's been in a long time and is only going to get worst because of anti-cheat systems.

Visual Studio is on more platforms than Windows and not even the preferred IDE of most devs on Windows unless they are doing .NET.

FreeBSD does not excel on the server side. I don't know any companies that even use it and I spent the last decade consulting with hundreds of companies.

> Visual Studio is on more platforms than Windows

No, Visual Studio for Macs is a rebranded Mono thing, it has nothing to do with the Windows Visual Studio. There's no VS for Linux.

Of course MS had to complicate things by naming their electron editor Visual Studio Code...

Nope, Visual Studio for Mac started as a rebranded Mono thing after Xamarin acquisition.

Since then, the amount of plugins shared with Visual Studio has increased, which is a reason why Microsoft started pushing to write them in C# instead of COM.

Currently it is being rewritten, and should be mostly completly unrelated to Mono Develop by .NET 7 release.

I'm sure it depends on the games you want to play - competitive games where anti-cheat is a thing, sure, but if you're ideologically against having kernel level anti-cheat then that's not that Linux gaming is bad, it's just that gaming as a whole is bad.

Most single-player stuff I've tried has worked fine on Linux with either Lutris + Wine or Steam + Proton. The only games that haven't are super small indie stuff where I just assume they're coded a little poorly in some way.

You're kidding right? Linux gaming compatibility has been near ideal for me for the past year and we already know the anti-cheat situation is at least being worked thanks to vendors like Valve. I haven't boot into Windows for a long time for gaming. The only real exceptions being Microsoft exclusives or multiplayer EGS titles.

This comment is wrong on so many levels.

But to tackle the main one, gaming on Linux is in the best position it's ever been in. It's not getting 'worse' due to anti cheat, in fact the steamdeck and valve are actively bringing compatibility to linux for those things.

What can you possibly be basing your claim on there? Are you aware of proton?

I'm guessing you haven't heard of Netflix then

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-epyc-cpus-netflix-band...

The widely known use cases for FreeBSD doesn't have much to do with it "excelling" as a server OS.

Where does FreeBSD excel then, because last time I checked all the widely known use cases were split about 50/50 serving and routing, with a side of Playstation.

Re: Linux gaming: Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of the MCC playing on my Linux box. And Ori. And Stardew, RoR2, Everspace, XCOM2, SWTOR, Hades, DST, Hollow Knight, FTL, Terraria, Human Fall Flat, Portal 1/2, and a variety of other games.

As far as anticheat is concerned, that's actively being worked on by Valve and the largest stake holders.

Now list the games that you can't play

Literally none that I've tried have given me problems.

But to the working games, let me add: Overwatch, League of Legends, Anything from GBA/GB/NES/SNES/DS/OtherRetroSystems, Starcraft. Oh, and Minecraft of course.

I'm sure I can come up with more.

Edit: One steam library checking later - and I'll note, this is stuff that I've actually played on Linux (and is also filtered by names I think people would recognize): Arma 3, Blitzkrieg 2, Pit People, Castle Crashers, BattleBlock Theater, Unturned, Invisible Inc., Baldurs Gate, Undertale, Speedrunners, Dota 2, Gary's Mod, Everspace, Raft, AoE 3.

This makes up the VAST majority of my steam library, none of which was purchased checking for Linux compatibility.

It's one thing to say that a specific game you want doesn't work, and quite another to say it in general doesn't work.

Edit again: Rocket League. That's it. That's the only one that I know of issues with, and I don't know if it even still has issues - I stopped playing when it required an Epic account.

Oh hey, lookie there: https://www.protondb.com/app/252950 . Sounds like that works too.

You could (to some extent) say the same thing about FreeBSD: https://github.com/shkhln/linuxulator-steam-utils/wiki/Compa...

There's also Proton port but have no idea on how it works nowadays.

https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton/

>FreeBSD does not excel on the server side. I don't know any companies that even use it and I spent the last decade consulting with hundreds of companies.

Examples come to mind: Whatsapp and Hotmail used to use it before being acquired by companies with their own tech stacks. Netflix's streaming service is based on it. Pfsense was based on it at one time, not sure if it still is. Juniper uses it. If you go check out the FreeBSD Foundation donations pages you'll see Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, and others.

Reality is that on the server and in the data center all I need from an OS is a near posix userland and wired network and storage drivers.

I always wondered how FreeBSD foundation is run.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/about-the-foundation/...

They have so little income with those sponsors and multiple times that expense and who is covering the cost?

The total income is like one guy's salary and is that all those big names are paying as sponsors?

I am an avid fan and user of FreeBSD, l have wondered the same thing myself over the years.

Windows excels at development if you're using Microsoft tech. Virtually all other tech stacks are at a disadvantage on Windows. WSL and WSL2 were created largely to address this gap.

WSL and WSL2 were created to target the market of people that buy Mac laptops when they should be supporting Linux OEMs.

People that don't care what OS they are running, as long as they get their POSIX toys.

In fact, given the size of that market, most likely Linux would never happened if Microsoft had been half as serious with Windows NT POSIX subsystem.

Yeah, GNU/NT would have changed everything.

Instead we got cygwin :-/

Windows NT POSIX subsystem was more like BSD/NT, basic effort.

And SUA was also not much GNU related.

> Instead we got cygwin :-/

I've only used what I think is a subset (of a clone or subset?) of Cygwin: "git bash". At two jobs, on two different Win 10 laptops now.

Is the rest of Cygwin also as excruciatingly slow?

My understanding is that the general problem description for "this Unix program is really really slow when recompiled for Windows" is generally either "lots of small files is good style on Unix, but expensive on Windows," or "fork() is nearly free on every Unix, but potentially expensive in NT."

This UNIX program is slow when compiling to any non POSIX OS (Windows is not the only one), because well stuff like fork() has to be emulated.

Sorry, I still don't get it -- I don't understand what either "lots of small files" or "stuff like fork()" have to do with this. Are those really the reason that "git bash", a single command line interpreting shell, runs single commands like 'ls -l *.txt" or "cd ../../uncle_dir/cousin_dir" as if it was stuck in a mixture of tar and molasses? (Do any processes have to be forked to switch my pwd? And it wasn't really all that many .txt files! :-)

Oh well, my entire data set is N=2, so anecdata rather than any wide-reaching survey; could well be pure coincidence. It just struck me as I started a new job last Monday, got a new Windows work laptop and started the arduous process of installing required (and allowed) software on it, how uncanny the similarities between corporate computing environments are... Right down to this apparent slowness on the MING-64 command line.

> People say it’s Windows that excels for development (because of Visual Studio)

Depends on the development you're doing. .NET or C# -- Windows, hands down. That's about it.

Besides, I prefer JetBrains IDEs anyway, which are platform agnostic.

And I'm in the same boat, macOS for work/development, loonix on VMs/servers, and Windows is strictly for gaming.

> …and Dragonfly, in particular…

Can you please elaborate? My exposure to DragonflyBSD is limited to knowing that they have an interesting new filesystem (Hammer2).

What is it like to actually use it? Is Hammer2 a significant improvement over ZFS on FreeBSD? Does Dragonfly have other selling points?

I’d love to hear the strongest case for deploying Dragonfly.

I use it (FreeBSD) because I want my workstation to match my servers when it comes to basics like the environment variables, kernel versions, and packages.

I manage 100+ servers, and 1000+ domains. If I want to make sure that a security patch for a critical CVE doesn't fuck with our systems, or I want to test a new script to make sure it works I do the following:

ZFS snapshot of my "dev jail". Apply the patch/write the script. Test everything and make sure it still works. Ansible: ZFS snapshot the fleet, apply the patch/deploy the script

So gaming and other 'fun' things are not my goal on my workstation, I do use it. There's at least One of us!

Because it's what my servers use, it's what I want to use on my desktop. I'd like to add here that I LOVE using i3. I'm from an age where the OS is supposed to get out of the way. I want to use my programs, not my operating system.

> Mac for development

Is Mac really any better than Windows or Linux for dev? Or is it just that a Macbook is more convenient to carry around?

Compared to Linux it’s a toss up. Though the Mac UI is miles ahead of standard Linux; you have to spend quite a long time tuning your DE to get something good and even then there is UI consistency across toolkits. The Mac has things like Office, Photoshop, Affinity Photo, more games as well. Linux has better package managers and is more customisable.

Both are vastly better than Windows for development.

The Mac OSX UI is at least as bad as Windows. FFS Finder, guys!

Never liked Finder but you can have alternatives like ForkLift and Transmit. I even enabled "Quit Finder" to get it out of my alt-tabbing.

Cocoa is much, much better than anything I have seen on Windows.

Finder is just an application, but the toolkit is pervasive.

For me personally, moving back to Linux has been a huge improvement. Absolutely the only thing I miss from my mbp was having out-of-the-box keymapping of Control to Control and Command to Super, giving me readline throughout the system. I'm sure there's a straightforward way to produce this in KDE, but it'd be nice not to have to monkey with it. Readline is amazing.

Frankly, the tools themselves are quite similar for the web dev that I do, so I can have the same set of tools running on either OS but it's the little utilities that counts.

There may be alternatives in Windows with same quality but haven't looked at Windows other than gaming for a while.

- QR code generator on copy (No you don't paste nor hit the generate button but it produces the code on copy while the app is running)

- Clipboard manager that can search and preview images even. Who can live without a good clipboard manager these days? Losing password you just generated because you copied your user name should be a thing of the past. I heard Win11 finally getting one. Didn't find any good third party ones the last time I looked.

- Trackpad. This is such a good stuff, I just swipe down with my 3 fingers to close any tab/window with customizable gestures. No more hitting the tiny close button and plenty others tailored for each app as if my right hand is a magic wand.

- A good terminal with even better third party one. Windows finally getting Windows Terminal or WSL shell but was a decade late to the entry.

- iOS simulator. It's handy to check how a web site behaves in iOS within your OS.

- Develop for iOS/macOS. For those who do.

And generally the better look throughout than the convoluted structure of Windows app with 10 drop downs in the menu bar, 20 icons below that, with settings hidden under, settings -> advanced -> more.

And it's even worse when it comes to OS setting that is cross buried in the new settings and the control panel that still exists.

I don't get distracted by the OS except for the occasional OS update that would hold me up for 10 minutes.

And the hardware is good too and I guess no one complains Mac is expensive when an Air is like $1k.

> Also I really don't get why BSD developers care to develop desktop environment with their limited resource

Because they want to: they are the limited resource, and have agency. They may allocate their time as they please, and to their own benefit and preferences. Why should they pander to yours, when you don't even use it, let alone contribute? I struggle to comprehend how such an over-entitled expectation arises.

> if they want to stay relevant

I don't think you realise the sheer scale of the unobtrusively installed BSD base, from fundamental infrastructure (SANs, routers) to home entertainment systems (PS5) and more besides.

And of course, rather notoriously, BSD origins still account for a fair chunk of the userland on that Mac of yours.

I used to use BSD on my hobby server just to keep up with the BSD world but nowadays on Linux, I use various packages from Docker hub and little tools from Homebrew but they don't work on BSD and I've lost the reason to use BSD especially when Ubuntu offers zfs in easy to use packages.

I don't use BSD nor Linux for desktop because I like the third party tools offered on macOS for work and now I don't know what BSD is for me. I'm also amazed how FreeBSD doesn't care to make it work on Raspberry Pi.

Perhaps I'm not the only one in the same boat and people may stop packaging tools for BSD and less people may use it.

Not my business but just an advice.

I see the license is a big part that keeps BSD rolling where the manufacturers want to keep their changes to their own and I get it that people should thank how OpenSSH is developed upstream at OpenBSD.

> I don't use BSD nor Linux for desktop because I like the third party tools offered on macOS for work and now I don't know what BSD is for me. I'm also amazed how FreeBSD doesn't care to make it work on Raspberry Pi.

Where did you get that from? Maybe they care, but it's not that easy for some technical reason?

I got that too far. I had the impression it was borked but it just didn't have wi-fi support. Other parts work. But it does limit its usage like making a wireless router out of it. (Can attach an external antenna via USB maybe.)

https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/Raspberry%20Pi#What_works

IIRC BSDs had containers first but they worked slightly differently.

You have bsdgames. What else could you want?

Doom

I've got a MacBook Air and MacBook Pro from 2011 and 2012. Neither is supported by Mac OS X anymore but Fedora 35 works perfectly on them. Both have Broadcom WiFi chips.

You don't need Flatpak on FreeBSD. Flatpak was created for a problem that doesn't exist on FreeBSD. There are not a thousand different FreeBSDs with varying kernels and software installed.

When I say BSD doesn't support Flatpak, I mean literal Flatpak. I want to go to Flathub and install any piece of software. Yes, not possible because BSD is not Linux, but as a user I don't care. Flatpak has solved packaging and installing software across distros, and I'm not willing to give it up.

BSD people keep insisting on going back to fifteen years ago GNU/Linux on the desktop as if that was a great thing.

I miss being young, having lots of energy, being able to function on 4 hours of sleep and having all my life in front of me as much as the next person but you'll have to take systemd, networkmanager, docker/kubernetes and zfs off my cold, dead hands.

> but you'll have to take systemd, networkmanager, docker/kubernetes and zfs off my cold, dead hands.

I thought zfs came from Solaris/FreeBSD

You're right, and they also have jails and the FreeBSD service command seems to have been the inspiration for systemd (or is at least so close that it could have been). I think people are just unaware and afraid of trying "new" things.

you and GP are only partially right:

- zfs came from solaris, not from freebsd

- solaris and freebsd share very little as codebases and are very different OSes

- and regarding the previous point: the fact that some OSes shared the codebase ~30 years ago means very little today.

- the zfs people use on FreeBSD today is basically ZfsOnLinux. Som years ago the freebsd people dropped their snowflake implementation and joined the ZfsOnLinux effort, basically because ZfsOnLinux was moving at a way faster pace than they were. The project has been renamed OpenZFS iirc, and FreeBSD periodically rebases on that afaik.

You are assuming FreeBSD has the same problems Linux had fifteen years ago, and thus requires the same changes/fixes/workarounds. It doesn’t. Good example would be PulseAudio, which is mostly a workaround for ALSA deficiencies that FreeBSD doesn’t have.

One thing I like about OpenBSD as a desktop is that it's extremely focused. Yeah, it's not a good system for playing games, but neither is the laptop I want to run it on. Yeah, there aren't a lot of wifi chips that it supports, but when a wifi chipset works, it just works. None of that Linux ``yeah it kind of works, but you have to jump through all these hoops...'' nonsense. It either works, or it doesn't.

Yes, there are many things you can't do on an OpenBSD system, but those are things you wouldn't really want to do on an OpenBSD system anyway.

On wireless:

/etc/hostname.foobar

lladdr random

join ESSID wpakey blahblahb

inet autoconf

inet6 autoconf

That's it.

It's beautiful because it's not only simple, but you get the understand more of what's going on.

> It either works, or it doesn't.

Sounds like that 50/50 joke (about the likelihood of bumping into a dinosaur in the street).

One thing about OpenBSD that impressed me is that whatever is supported is supported correctly.

My go to example is my laptop’s keyboard backlight works exactly as expected from tty terminals.

I’m willing to limit my hardware options to the small subset that works with OpenBSD in return for having an OS that I can trust. Fortunately, this small subset includes the X1 Carbon thinkpads which are really nice.

I’m experimenting living with a combination of iPad + openBSD thinkpad - iPad for things like Netflix and Zoom where the business isn’t interested in supporting openBSD, and my laptop for everything else.

PS: Bluetooth is a terrible protocol and should be nuked from orbit out of existence. None of my 5 bluetooth headphones (from different vendors and different price ranges) can figure out which device I was last playing from, my car repeatedly steals my bluetooth audio and starts playing music without my consent every single time, audio stops streaming randomly despite my phone/iPad thinking that they are connected and continuing to play - I can rant for a long time. I genuinely respect openBSD developers for deleting the bluetooth stack to improve the OS quality.

Never considered a BSD general desktop use OS but you are really making me consider installing it on my old Thinkpad T420 which is still going strong and upgraded quite a bit.

On OpenBSD and gaming, check PlayOnBSD. Of course is nowhere near Linux or even FreeBSD, but you can set an XFCE desktop with GVFS supported device automounting withou too much hazzle.

BSDs pretty consistently perform at the bottom of most performance benchmarks I've seen, when compared to Linux.

NetBSD appears to have embraced a niche as a research OS, not sure about the other distros.

Let me guess, the benchmarks you have in mind are Phoronix, right? :->

No I think I saw them on openbenchmarking, why?

Looking at openbenchmarking.org, it seems they are related to Phoronix?

As to why - essentially, Phoronix benchmarks are crap, for a number of reasons:

1. They don't provide things like standard deviation

2. They compile software in improper way

3. They don't even know what are they measuring in the first place

It's been pointed to them numerous times, and honestly, I think it's a waste of time.

I dunno, sounds like sour grapes to me.

Those benchmarks are in agreement with my subjective experience of running (open)bsd on an allegedly well-suoported thinkpad: compared to debian, bsd was sluggish and lasted hours less on battery.

Performance is not the top priority for OpenBSD developers.

No idea about OpenBSD (BSDs are completely separate operating systems), but I remember recent case where certain bad FreeBSD result was tracked down to PTS failing to correctly measure test time.

I hate to say this, but I suspect PTS is not actually a benchmark - it’s a publicity generation tool pretending to be a benchmark.

I tried FreeBSD a couple of years back, and X Windows seemed buggy. I mean, come on, this is something that should have been sorted out by now.

Maybe if one were into speed and minimalism, and didn't want a GUI, then one of the BSDs is a good idea. At the time I thought it was slower than Slackware, according to my completely unscientific evaluation. Linux may be more complex than the BSDs, but remember, a lot of resources get poured into Linux.

I'm glad that the BSDs exist, I'm just not particularly inclined to use them.

Interesting... I've never used bluetooth or flatpak... or any BSD except in a VM for compat testing. Yet they are described as must haves here.

Few things missing for me after a similar switch are FreeBSD's lack of support for 80211ac and 80211ax, trackpad (I ditched Apple's faulty "Pro" hardware but their trackpads are awesome) and fingerprint scanner support for my ThinkPad (T14s AMD Gen1).

What I absolutely do not miss are Apple's constant crappy UI/UX changes and progressing configurability deprivation delivered under the umbrella of secretive security updates.

With Apple I had to choose between security and stable UX. No iPhone or Mac felt "mine" in recent years. I still use iPhone (lesser evil thing) but replaced MBP with ThinkPad (FreeBSD always had good support for ThinkPads) and am not looking back. I don't miss eye-candy software, designer hardware and I cherish configurability and that my computer is "mine" again and feels like a tool not a toy. Due to macOS' BSD roots, large part of my userland remained almost unchanged.

What DE / WM are you running? And why FreeBSD instead of Linux?

POLA, invested time stays valuable. The system is one, not many seperate and daily changing parts. Not having to learn dozens of network management and DNS resolvers gives you back your valuable time to focus on things you really want to do. On the various Linux distributions you must discover how it's glued together at this point in time.

Linux is fragmented, to be sure, but if you go with stock Fedora or Ubuntu, everything just works (mostly). I never had to put any thought into network management or DNS, except to change my DNS from my ISP to Cloudflare.

Ubuntu has been my daily driver for well over a decade now. As a developer I always wanted to give Fedora a try. Every two years or so I give it a chance and... Not even once did I succed in installing it.

Just Google "fedora won't install" and you'll see what I mean. From my perspective fedora is a meme distro.

Yes, I'm a power user. I just don't want to spend a whole day on something that's expected to work out of the box.

Interesting. I'm surprised to hear that. I've never once had a problem, but its installer is weird. Figuring out how to select the target disk is always strange. Other than that, though, it's the same as any other installer.

The thing I really like about Fedora is how recent the software is. I also prefer dnf to apt.

For reference:

https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/unbootable-fedora-35-livecd-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/qmgxo4/fedora_wont_...

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1976653

I really wanted it to work. I too enjoy trying out new versions of software but I never got to experience what Fedora has to offer.

I have went back and forth from Ubuntu to fedora and literally never had an issue. Same for dist upgrades. Right now I only use fedora, and like you, I too am a power user that can't be bothered to deal with os shenanigans.

In my experience Fedora or Ubuntu just work, until they don't, usually after system update. Then you're in poorly documented territory, often deep in the bowels of GNOME. If video or networking broke hopefully you have a backup system to refer back to. Maybe they've gotten better recently, but I've had much better experience with minimalist setups where breakages are far less frequent and easier to fix on the rare occasions they happen.

i3wm on top of compton.

Most of the time, I don't need bleeding edge and I have always found FreeBSD somewhat more coherent and approaching the future carefully, not hastily, albeit this may be related to much lower number of contributors.

For a long time I did not cared for the fact that FreeBSD kernel and userland are delivered by people closely working together but eventually there was an epiphany after comparing with some more chaotic OS options. There's little things like system scripts delivered with correct version of interpreter so you don't have code deprecation warnings during boot time. There's documentation in place - `sysctl -d [-a]` and you don't need tarot, system sources or 3rd party knowledge to configure parts of OS.

Linux is OK. If not for FreeBSD, I'd probably be using Linux full-time. Currently I use it virtualized for Docker builds. Linux is better for a lot of things that may be important to some but FreeBSD suits my use-cases almost perfectly. FreeBSD gives me this "right at home" feeling which I don't get with Linux and which I definitely no longer can get from a commercial OS.

I always used BSD for servers when it is an option. Linux distros are frustratingly different from classic BSD/SysV for seemingly no good reason while FreeBSD is "just right" for me. Same for OS X historically on workstations/laptops. I've tried many times to get FreeBSD working well on laptops but since all of my laptops are macs that has been unworkable.

My biggest problem with OS X in recent years is the process bloat. Mountain Lion was the last "clean" version to have a reasonable number of OS processes running, now it's in the mid hundreds (!) It's not just resource usage, it's the attack surface/telemetry leakage. I only want the absolute minimum processes running and FreeBSD still gives me that.

> configurability deprivation

Macs are rare machine where I live, so I have 0 experience with them.

A few weeks ago someone came at work with a Mac for a presentation and nothing was showing on the projector.

I had to search on the web to learn that in the screen config menu if you press a certain shortcut a hidden menu will appear and let you manage dual screen options. I'm still baffled...

I still never managed to make the thing work, I had to lend a Windows laptop to the guy (which just plugged and played like you would expect from the Mac!).

I use a Mac all the time, and have never had to press a "certain shortcut" for a "hidden menu" for this to work. You literally just check (or uncheck, as your heart desires) "Mirror Displays" under the arrangement tab.

My bad it's a secret button, not a menu: https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/show-det...

Worst UX ever IMHO.

Like the only way to eject the CD-ROM was by putting the icon in the trash can back then. How do you discover that?

> Note: This blog post has been rewritten at least 3 times. I started with describing how I configured the system, then I went to bragging about how I love bspwm, how I set up all my jails, etc. I might still write about it at some point, but not this time. Every time I started writing the post, I realised that I was missing a point. I can say now that I know what I really wanted to say: that I love FreeBSD and I find joy in using it.

I really appreciate the honesty and I think it was a good choice to focus on fleshing out the message. Also: Quite the un-evangelistic stance on this rather controversy-inducing topic!

> The hardware itself also got worse. Removal of all but 2 USB-C ports from MacBook Pro was a last nail to the coffin for me.

Small correction, the latest MacBook Pro has 4 USB-c ports and an HDMI port

That said, is this really a big deal to people? Do you really still use Ethernet ports and USB-A ports directly on your laptop?

I use a docking station with a single USB-C cable to connect my Mac. Everything else connects to the dock. It’s simple, it works, I’ve had this setup for six months with zero issues. Linux computers also work the same way.

When I am working mobile, in a coffee shop or similar, I never use the ports. An external mouse would work with Bluetooth, and I’ve never needed to use external devices while on the go.

I don’t understand why people need a cocktail of barely used ports at all times. Is there a common workflow that I’m not aware of?

> Do you really still use… USB-A ports directly on your laptop?

Yes.

Ok. Is there any reason you can’t spend 10-20 dollars on USB-C cables to replace your USB-A cables?

1. Some devices don't have a removable USB-A cable

2. Why throw away something that is perfectly working and useful?

You dont have to, spend $6.99 on a pack of 4 usb-a to c adapters instead.

Considering the number of USB-A devices I still own, it would be considerably more than “20-30 dollars”. More like $200, and those are all devices, chargers, and travel/backup chargers I rely on regularly.

It’s not so simple to migrate. Consider:

- Some devices have a proprietary end and a USB-A end, and there’s no USB-C equivalent (my Pebble chargers; my microphone; my webcam). I have tried dongles with these before and left disappointed every time

- some devices have a USB-A cord attached permanently, such as my desk lamp. Again, dongles are unreliable here and thus a downgrade.

- For portable devices like my standalone GPS for bike touring, my lights for my bicycle, my phone, my watch, and anything else small I might want to charge when travelling by car… I still need USB-A for the car itself. Easier to pack one cable for the whole trip instead of a USB-C cord for hotels and a USB-A cord for the car.

- My personal laptop still has USB-A ports, but no USB-C ports. As far as I can tell there are no non-sketchy adapters that go from a male USB-C cable to a female USB-A port. Apple makes a very expensive Thunderbolt2<->Thunderbolt3 adapter that I use at my desk when I want to use my personal laptop there, but that adapter is $50 or so. Already over your budget.

- I don’t have any USB-C wall warts at all. The last phone I bought was the 2016 iPhone SE. I have a plethora of USB-A wall warts from family and friends who didn’t need them. They work well.

Why are some people so hellbent on removing functionality that other people use every day and can’t replace without significant expense and inconvenience? It’s just like the damn headphone jack on iPhones: I understand that a lot of people are fine with Bluetooth only, but I am not. It’s frustrating to lose the option.

> Why are some people so hellbent on removing functionality that other people use every day and can’t replace without significant expense and inconvenience?

I imagine you were outraged when laptops started replacing serial ports with USB-A, too.

That's not really a fair comparison. USB has been around a long time and provides a lot of functionality.

I love USB-C on my phone and think it's a great upgrade, but I'm not interested in contributing to more e-waste to upgrade a laptop that doesn't need it, just so I can buy more ultimately e-waste adapters with USB-C.

For me, the best thing about USB-C on a laptop is universal charging. That's been a game changer.

I think I had one serial device in my house when that happened. And only because I was a nerd (it was a 3-button mouse, IIRC).

Nope. Granted, I wasn't an adult at the time, but I just didn't have many peripherals that used the serial connection.

USB-C just doesn't have many benefits over USB-A for a huge number of peripherals and cables. It's useful for bandwidth for one webcam I own, but for my mouse, my keyboard, my e-reader, and most other devices... there's no difference other than the cable shape. It's enough of a sidegrade (and enough of a pain in the ass to deal with adapters) that it just isn't worthwhile. And, as I said -- backwards compatibility is a big issue for me, since my personal laptop only has USB-A/Thunderbolt 2 ports.

Not to mention the fact that my raspberry pi 4, which I'll be using as a lightweight home server for years, only has USB-C for power input... USB-A for all other peripherals. A minority of devices in my household (only one!), between my personal laptop, work laptop, home server, car, and wall warts, use USB-C. Upgrading would require a lot of inconvenience and redundancy.

A better option would be to use USB-A to USB-C adapters -- a quick check of Amazon says you can buy one for $15USD[0]. This also side-steps the worry about devices with a proprietary "other end" or where the cable is unremovable -- all it's doing is changing the port shape on the host side.

[0]: https://smile.amazon.com/Anker-Adapter-Converts-Technology-C...

Absolutely yes. I still have a lot of good external devices that use USB-A.

I use real ethernet cable for database things every day, no question; many people are accustomed to an HDMI setup at their desk, with a carry-home laptop, right?

Thought I would clarify, I also use an Ethernet connection. To the dock.

Do you basically pop open your laptop with just an Ethernet cable connected and work like that for 8 hours?

Sounds terrible to me, neck pain from constantly looking down at your laptop screen would not go well for me. External monitors mounted at eye level is the way to go.

> Sounds terrible to me, neck pain from constantly looking down at your laptop screen would not go well for me.

I have an external monitor and a stand for my laptop. It is pretty awesome.

> Do you really still use Ethernet ports and USB-A ports directly on your laptop?

At my workstation, yes: Ethernet is so much faster than WiFi, and I like to use a real keyboard and mouse with a KVM, and the whole setup is USB-A & HDMI. Maybe in the future I will have a USB-C/HDMI/DisplayPort KVM, though.

> When I am working mobile, in a coffee shop or similar, I never use the ports.

Me neither, but I prefer to do my work in my home office, so my laptop spends most of its time in a stand, hooked up to an external portrait monitor, keyboard and mouse.

> An external mouse would work with Bluetooth

I would never use wireless with a peripheral. Batteries, security (for a keyboard; far less of a concern with a mouse), pairing. Just say no to RF, and yes to wires.

> That said, is this really a big deal to people? Do you really still use Ethernet ports and USB-A ports directly on your laptop?

I don't on my mac, because I can't. I don't like having to buy and carry a dongle. I don't like using bluetooth peripherals because they are more expensive and require charging the batteries. I don't like being forced to buy adaptors so all the USB tech I already own can continue to work with the MacBooks that every job insists I must use.

> I use a docking station with a single USB-C

Fine, but I don't want to carry a docking station when I'm on the go.

> An external mouse would work with Bluetooth

I already have a $100 trackball mouse and a $100 mechanical keyboard. I don't want to rebuy these items with (more expensive) Bluetooth versions since the wired versions should work for years and years to come. Very wasteful. Besides, batteries expire, and many bluetooth items don't have replaceable batteries. These items will stop working long before their wired counterparts.

> I’ve never needed to use external devices while on the go.

Makes sense you wouldn't understand the issue then. I use USB devices every day.

> I don’t understand why people need a cocktail of barely used ports at all times

I use my USB devices every day, and not one of them plugs natively into my computer anymore. USB-A devices are less expensive and more reliable than their BT and USBC counterparts.

I mean you could just use a USB-C cable and avoid every annoyance you've claimed.

How do I replace the cable on my trackball? Crack open the case and solder?

> USB-A devices

Are fairly rare, unless you are talking laptops/desktops (and other hosts), hubs, and wallwarts.

USB Micro-B is the most common on devices that aren't USB-C.

Micro-B devices connect to A hosts with an A-to-Micro-B cable, but you can connect them to C hosts with a C-to-Micro-B cable just as easily.

I'm speaking about devices with built-in cables, for example my Kensington Expert trackball, USB sound card, external webcam, etc.

Obviously I get by, but when using my Linux machine which has 3 USB ports, it's just simpler. I would never buy a mac in 2022, but work requires us to use one.

> > USB-A devices

> Are fairly rare, unless you are talking laptops/desktops (and other hosts), hubs, and wallwarts.

A new device is still much more likely to arrive with a USB-A connector than USB-C. Most of the devices on the shelf at, say, Target, come ready to be plugged in to USB-A, not C.

Yes, you can get other cables or adapters. But if Macs hadn't dropped all USB-A ports, that wouldn't be necessary.

This. People need to buy a dock and stop whining. Or buy a desktop Mac in the first place and stop whining.

Oh I need Ethernet -> buy a dock (or fix your shitty wifi network).

Oh I need numerous USB devices -> buy a dock.

Oh I don't like BT devices -> buy a dock.

Oh I want to use some crusty old USB-A devices -> buy a dock.

Oh I want to use my mechanical keyboard and mouse -> why are you using a laptop? ... buy a dock

Dell sell a very nice Thunderbolt one that has 3x USB-A's, does PD, has two displayport outputs that work perfectly with the M1 macbooks (and PCs). I've got one. And it has a USB-A headset, mechanical keyboard and mouse connected to it and 2x 27" 4K displays with one single USB-C cable.

But screw all that I'd rather use the laptop built in devices (14" M1Pro MBP) and live a simpler life where I don't have a bunch of balls and chains hanging around forever.

... even better, if you can work with a single monitor, buy a USB-C monitor with built-in dock. They give you USB-A ports and sometimes also Ethernet. Dell has them in every size.

This is what I ended up doing -- I got a (relatively) inexpensive LG 4K monitor with USB-C, DisplayPort, and 2x HDMI inputs, and the monitor has a built-in headphone jack and a pair of USB-A ports. Plug in one cable, and my laptop or tablet turn into an experience that gets you close-ish to a desktop (the iPad still has real issues when you're trying to run it primarily through an external monitor, mostly that it only occupies a small portion of the screen if the app isn't specifically designed to handle an external display).

Could you share the LG monitor model?

LG 27UN850-W

It's a 2020 model, and they've updated it since then (the version listed on their website is 27UP850-W), but I don't think the panel itself has changed notably. I'd also recommend turning off the HDR support, especially if you're using it as a computer monitor -- all it seems to do is blow out reds and blues while undercooking greens.

Thanks a lot!

I have this monitor too and love it, but there is one major caveat -- the USB hub only operates at USB 2.0 speeds (480Mbps) when using a single cable for both display and USB.

This is an important caveat, but one I haven't stumbled over yet (I use the USB hub for M+KB and a 1080p webcam+mic, so I'm well under the 480Mbit limit).

I got a Dell Ultrawide 38" for this reason. Unfortunately it has a charging USB-C bug that conflicts with Apple hardware and Dell doesn't care about. They explicitly tell that they only support Windows. The display is awesome, but still.

Which bug? I also have a Dell 38", but never had any issues. Both MBP and a M1 Air work fine for me.

Hi, this one https://www.dell.com/community/Monitors/U3818DW-USB-Type-C-p...

Having to lug a dock around sorta defeats the promise of portability.

So does dragging around all the accessories that you "need" to plug into your laptop.

All I hear is the conflicting arguments:

1. I don't want to compromise on anything.

2. I want a laptop.

You don't always know what you'll need to plug in to on a given day, when you leave the house.

Old Macs covered a bunch of those cases with built-in ports.

Modern ones cover a lot fewer so you have to carry more crap.

I’m not plugging in anything I don’t own for security reasons.

Cool, you've flatly refused to assist/present-to the client, and will now be-fired/lose-the-contract.

See why people need to connect to stuff other than what they personally own?

I’ve never had that problem in 25 years of doing this.

Lots of people use lots of ports that aren't USB-C, and are inconvenienced by having to carry dongles and extra cables if their laptop has very few kinds of built-in port. These people have actual needs and reasons behind their behavior. That's all. It's fine that you're not one of them.

I don't want to carry around a collection of bits to have a fully equipped laptop. I want something compact that comes in one piece.

My laptop has all the right bits inside it. Doesn't yours?

Nope. No ergonomic mouse built into mine.

Require people to throw away money on more docking stations? Not going to stop whining over that.

> Do you really still use Ethernet ports and USB-A ports directly on your laptop?

Absolutely! I do have a dock at my desk of course, but every so often I need to go somewhere and plug into the network there or connect directly to some appliance that sets up a local network on one of its ports for configuration.

If I could just leave my laptop plugged into my docking station all the time I would get a tower PC.

> That said, is this really a big deal to people? Do you really still use Ethernet ports and USB-A ports directly on your laptop?

Every panel in my house supports HDMI (so, great that they added it back). ONE supports USB-C, and only because I bought it to use with a MacBook.

Probably 75-80% of USB devices in my house that I might want to plug into my laptop are still USB-A. That might hit 50/50 in another few years.

> Probably 75-80% of USB devices in my house that I might want to plug into my laptop are still USB-A.

That seems...improbable.

I would bet that most of the devices are USB Micro-B. They probably came with USB-A to Micro-B cables, but you can get USB-C to Micro-B cables, too, and since USB-C supports a superset of the modes supported over Micro-B, there is no reduction in function (as there might be connecting a USB-C device with a USB-A to USB-C cable.)

Of course, if you did need to connect a USB-A device to your laptop, a USB-A to USB-C cable will do that, and are much easier to find than USB-A to USB-A cables you'd need if it was a USB-A-only laptop.

OK, let me rephrase:

- 100% of devices with a hard-wired cable are USB-A

- Most of the rest are USB-mini or USB-micro and 100% of the cables that came with them or that I've acquired since have an A connector on the other end.

- Nearly all my USB-C devices are for recent game consoles and I wouldn't plug them in to my MacBook except maybe to charge them.

> Of course, if you did need to connect a USB-A device to your laptop, a USB-A to USB-C cable will do that, and are much easier to find than USB-A to USB-A cables you'd need if it was a USB-A-only laptop.

Oh gee I didn't know adapters existed, thanks.

I keep a CalDigit dock on my desk and two small USB-C adapters (thumbprint sized) in my bag for when I travel and need Ethernet or to plug in my GameCube controller, for instance. I don’t understand people who call this “lugging around” - there’s very small setups out there.

Haven’t cared about an old school port in years. Just feels like an overblown concern, short of easier monitor hookup - but the newer MacBooks bringing that back makes this somewhat moot, and it should’ve never left to begin with.

> Do you really still use Ethernet ports and USB-A ports directly on your laptop?

For my personal laptop, my headset, USB flash drives and my external backup hard drives all use USB-A. So does the receiver for my old wireless mouse, although that one's old enough that almost everyone would probably have replaced it with something Bluetooth by now. There are also a bunch of older devices that I'm not using too often but which I haven't really had enough of a need to replace either.

Any of these would of course be simple enough to replace individually or to use with an adapter, but it's nicer to not have to bother, so yes, I do use them. It's not so much that most of them are a part of a common workflow for me (except for the mouse, but as I said, that one's pretty old and it's easy to argue it would make sense to replace it with a Bluetooth one anyway). It's more that it feels wasteful to have to replace working peripherals simply due to older connectors, and cumbersome to have to use adapters. If a new laptop didn't come with USB-A ports, I wouldn't revolt, but it'd probably irk me somewhat as it's convenient to have one or two.

A dock would also be fine, of course, but they can be a bit on the expensive side for private use.

Yep, I have a dock but use the laptop USB-A ports a lot for flash drives.

Why? Because my stereo and car stereo only support USB-A. Would rather use sd-card.

Every time I read an article like this on HN, I can't help but wonder, is anyone actually using a Linux/FreeBSD machine at their workplace? It seems these posts are all about personal machines.

I'd love to use Linux professionally, but convincing IT to let me run something outside of their management has always been impossible.

Edit: Geez HN, this is a legitimate question and it's currently at -2 karma. What's up with this place lately?

Using Debian at work and on my personal laptop for at least 10 years now. Not missing anything.

I'm using on personal computer since '96. Professionally since 2000. I had a "Windows only break" for few months.

I do. "I am IT", so it helps, but we're basically OK with anyone "technical" (read devs & co) who wants to use anything else than windows. But that means they're on their own if random issues crop up.

I've been running Linux for the past 20ish years, professionally. In my previous company I was the only Linux-user, out of 50+ staff. In my current company there are approximately 100 employees and I'm one of two users.

I have had to jump through a couple of hoops now and again, installing an Antivirus scanner on my Debian laptop, and similar things. (Jumpcloud agent at this company too). But broadly speaking people have said "If you can take care of it, and if you have full-disk encryption then that's fine".

I've always mentioned it in interviews "I will expect to run Linux" and some people have grumbled, but nobody has said "no".

For what it's worth I'm a "devops person", rather than a developer.

> is anyone actually using a Linux/FreeBSD machine at their workplace?

Yes, in every tech company I worked at, the majority of developers used Linux machines (with fewer using macOS and even fewer Windows).

I've also been using Linux for personal stuff & gaming for 10+ years now.

Good timing for the question. Last week I had corporate IT give me a Windows laptop after about 15 years of running Linux at work.

The days are gone when all I needed was a DHCP address on the network and I could do anything. Over the last couple of years we've added more layers of security at the network layer that would unexpectedly break me and corporate apps are increasingly tied into AD for authentication. Yes, these can all eventually be sorted out for a Linux workstation but without corporate support it became increasingly time-consuming and my harsh paymasters aren't interested in me spending time on that activity.

I think the last straw was when the Unix admins bailed and went to WSL for the desktop. They were my back-door resource for visibility on infrastructure changes that broke things for the non-Windows users.

WSL is fine, but it's lack of IPv6 is sort of a show-stopper for sysadmin work. If you're only using it for the coreutils then more power to you, but I still think I'd end up reaching for the trusty Arch Thinkpad when work needs to get done. To each their own, though.

AD = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Directory

I run Debian as my development desktop here at my small company for embedded systems stuff, and run FreeBSD for my database, file, and network servers. Also run Windows for office stuff. Only major OS I don't run at work is MacOS (and Chrome OS), although I do have an M1 MacBook Air at home for personal use.

Yes, we have FreeBSD desktops in use and our infrastructure runs on FreeBSD, OpenBSD and illumos. Linux is also in use but it has mostly been banished to SmartOS zones for those few applications that refuse to run on other systems than linux.

You can run Linux at my company if you want, there are probably two dozen or so engineers who do so, out of a few hundred. I'm still a fan of my mac personally, although i run plenty of Linux servers.

I know that it's not at all unusual for people to run Linux at Google where it has a lot of internal support, and i think there's a fair amount of adoption at Facebook

> Every time I read an article like this on HN, I can't help but wonder, is anyone actually using a Linux/FreeBSD machine at their workplace?

I have been using Linux exclusively at my workplaces for over a decade now, and honestly it is a non-negotiable part of interviewing for a job for me. There is no way I would tolerate being stuck with Windows or macOS.

There are solutions for device management for Linux, if a company really wants to do it, but my most recent several employers haven't cared one way or the other.

edit: I say 'non-negotiable,' but obviously I think that for several tens of thousands of dollars I would be willing to use macOS or Windows. But it would have to be a big several, not a small one, and I doubt anyone would put together that compensation package.

Yes, most of the people in my group have FreeBSD desktops where I work. FreeBSD is kind of the odd-man out, as our IT folks support Linux as a first class citizen (along side MacOS and Windows). So we have to use a few workarounds, but it goes fairly smoothly.

I've been using Linux on my work machine for nearly 5 years, and it's been great. I do cloud-based SaaS for a company that isn't exactly a tech company, but is always trying to move more in that direction.

I think it's an option many employers should consider supporting as a recruiting tool, and it makes a lot of sense if the target runtime for the software is Linux (as is the case for my company).

The thing is, any company that wants to make a serious investment in software engineering needs to have an IT department that can support the needs of developers separately from non-engineering staff.

Most SWEs at my job (FAANG) run Linux on their workstations (not sure if there is even a other option), and a lot of them run it on their company laptops too (the other popular option is using a Mac laptop)

It's way more common to see people using multiple workstation instead. Usually a Windows/Mac laptop for everyday computing tasks in conjunction with a dedicated workstation for development.

Running Debian (Mint / MATE) for about 8 years.

Biggest issue, running Teams natively (vs web app) and accepting calls. The VPN plays havoc.

>During the years, Apple started turning away from this beautiful UI into a world of plain, soulless and minimalistic UI.

A couple of years ago I ran every version of OS/X from 10.1 up the current release, each for a couple of weeks. One of the things that surprised me was how consistent it has been when I compare it to the alternatives. The only UI change that has really bothered me is hiding the proxy icon.

Proxy icons have been brought back as an “accessibility” option in macOS 12 Monterey jsyk: https://twitter.com/getaaron/status/1415432451200008195

Thanks for this! I had no idea.

I was super excited to receive my new M1 MacBook pro. After a 2 months wait, I get to work trying to setup my development workflow that consist of putting fullscreen windows on different desktops and repeatedly switching between those workspaces.

Well turns out you cannot deactivate transitions between workspaces and there is a small delay before the new workspace is interactive. There is no possible way I can work like that.

Went back to my ArchLinux + i3 on my Gigabyte Aero 15, happy to know that I'm not missing out much.

I still find my M1 to be a way better experience: the M1 is quick, the fans virtually never come on, and battery life is a total game changer.

I also never use the "Spaces" feature; why not just use 'maximized' windows? I use https://rectangleapp.com/ to easily resize windows with keyboard shortcuts, which works well.

I get trying something new and not really liking it, but if you're going to comment, you should make an attempt to actually try it...

Well you lose full screen benefits of going full screen like no menu bar, no window title bar, the dock hides even if you normally like it not-hidden.

Yeah you can use rectangle or BTT or one of the other dozens of the third party apps to do window snapping but to me at least they never feel quite as nice as the native options in Windows, KDE, Gnome, etc. Not sure why.

Menubar can be configured to auto-hide, though it’s kinda moot on the built in screen of M1 Pro/Max machines since those have a strip of added pixels on the top for the menubar to live in. Won’t hide the titlebar but that’s such a small part of the screen it’s never bothered me…. But then again I make use of titlebars frequently, the hotkey-dragging of tiling WMs drive me crazy.

Yeah the battery life is pretty insane. It's hard to fully describe to anyone who hasn't had an ARM laptop.

Any other laptop I've owned, including the glorious ~2015 MBP, was liable to either hit 2% battery or completely die if I left it unplugged overnight, which I sometimes do accidentally because I like to put on some boring YouTube playlist as I got to sleep.

With my M1 Macbook Air, I can accidentally leave it unplugged while playing YouTube videos all night, and I can wake up in the morning to find that it still has >90% battery left, sometimes even 95%.

Most importantly, it means not having to think about whether the airplane has power available when I fly. I can watch YouTube for a full 6 hour flight with no worries. I once played Halo CE Anniversary through Parallels on my mac during a flight and it lasted 3 hours before hitting maybe 10% battery remaining, which is pretty good considering that's Xbox 360 level graphics.

Have you tried 'Reduce motion' setting from the Accessibility preferences along with these: https://www.chriswrites.com/boost-your-macs-performance-by-d... ?

It reduces motion, but it does not remove that transition.

It is infuriating, as someone who is use to the instant switching of i3, I can't believe that it's not possible in MacOS.

My work arounds are to not use the native fullscreen for anything, and just do my best to remove window-titles/decorations from every app i use and then make them "fake full screen"

You’re not alone. Using i3 allows me to work on muscle memory without going through an observe-interpret-respond loop with every move. It really is a shame that animated transitions in macOS are non-optional. Who decided that transitions help users? It’s like tacky jQuery fade and swipe transitions on everything.

windows 10 also added transitions in a lot of places, quite deep in the UI framework, so much so that Office gets animated everything, including Excel cell focus gizmo.. And you have to cut some Windows UI effect options to stop that (at least it's doable). Such a horrendous idea.

I had a similar experience. I have used linux since I was in highschool until 2009 when I got a macbook. I initially loved it for the same reasons as the author but grew more frustrated and was less enthused every year. In 2013 the computer finally crashed during an update, and i was never able to get it to properly work. At the time I installed linux on a 2005 era PC and had no issues and this carried me the rest of the way through college. I've been back on linux since.

My employer sent me a dell, mac, and a forensics workstation. I use windows, macos, and linux daily. Aside from the trackpad and display, I'm actually the least impressed with the macbook. Maybe if I was running windows 11 things would be different.

I really don't see the magic that everyobe else sees in Apple products.

I love freebsd use it every where I can but its not very good in a desktop / laptop environment missing a lot of drivers for things like wifi and bluetooth on most laptops. The freebsd ports tree is what makes it so amazing but the ports for desktop applications are not as well maintained as the server stuff. Since all those programs work on linux and fedora provides a better desktop experience by default I just go with that.

I'm afraid I didn't like that article. I felt like it had said nothing concrete. :|

I saw that disclaimer, but still.

Agreed! It talked about choosing hardware and I figured it would go into a deep dive of the OS install, issues they encountered on the way, pros and cons of each... But it just basically ends after the hardware section.

Feels like it's missing ~50% of what you'd expect from an article like this... I'm not really sure what the point was of it...

It seems some FreeBSD developers use macOS themselves, instead of FreeBSD. I found this quite peculiar.

Would you board an airliner where you wrote the navigational software? /just kidding

I guess there are devs who spend quite a lot of time in macOS in order to work on things like https://airyx.org/.

People like to spend less time fighting the OS? That's the norm, not peculiar.

"Fighting the OS" you develop may lead to you fixing the errors and deficiencies of the system that annoy you and possibly annoy other people too.

I'm a FreeBSD developer and run FreeBSD on my desktop, and MacOS on my laptop. I have not had a great experience with any *nix other than MacOS on a laptop.

My main objection to MacOS & why I don't run it on my desktop is that I can't configure window management exactly how I want it, like I can with KDE or LXDE. Most of what I can't do centers around muscle memory for window management tricks involving mouse buttons and modifier keys. This goes away on a laptop with a trackpad, since the muscle memory is different with a trackpad than with a mouse.

I used FreeBSD on desktop for a number of years and switched over to OSX and I've been through some of the window management pain. I generally do as much as I can with keyboard hotkeys but I do have a trackpad connected to my desktop now as well.

As far as window management, I use contexts for my switcher, rectangle for hotkey-based window management, and stay for automated per-app & per-display window management

https://contexts.co

https://rectangleapp.com

https://cordlessdog.com/stay

There's also alternate window managers for OSX such as Yabai or Amethyst

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

This has also been true in Linux developer conferences. About 10 years ago, it was difficult seeing anyone running desktop Linux, and even more difficult seeing non-Apple hardware. Last 5 years situation changed significantly.

Why don’t these conversations ever mention GhostBSD? Is there really no Mint or elementary OS equivalent to BSD?

On a similar note, I turned away from MBP and use Ubuntu on T570. I do miss the aluminum build, but the modern linux desktop has improved so much in the last decade, that I don't miss the macos UI one bit. It feels good that the OS is not imposing itself between me and the hardware. For instance, you can't write x86 assembler 32bit in the intel mac machines, why? because apple decided for you.

I can't imagine going back to macos. To me the golden days is Mac OS X Lion, since then macos experience has been on a down hill path, trying to sell you their services, and I just tolerated until no longer can.

As a Mac user since 2004 I recently found myself seriously considering other options. Mainly due to the huge regression in UI/UX over the last 2-3 years. Most first party apps have become less functional and harder to use. I'm struggling to use these apps full of tiny gray similar looking icons that don't exactly work in similar ways. Is it my imagination or does drag and drop simply not work reliably on macOS anymore? Finder in column view is being the one I fight with constantly.

> I would not only save 2/3 of the price

For somebody familiar with Apple hardware that seems like a typo. Refurbished at one-third the price? Just checked and that’s actually the case.

Yep, non-Apple hardware has really low resell value, for better ( it's cheaper as a buyer) and worse ( if you're a seller intending to refresh often, you'll "lose" a lot).

Off topic: has anyone tried nix on FreeBSD? How is it?

Big jump from MacOS to bspwm... I can dig it, having moved to i3 on Arch from MacOS, but surely the WM is much more of the experience change, for day-to-day use, than the innards of the OS, filesystem, and so on.

do you guys think it would work: linux shop similar to apple stop when staff setup linux, and fix it for you while you sipping coffee?

I like FreeBSD quite a bit for some things but a desktop OS would likely not be one of them

The older I get, the more I'm into plug-and-play.

For everything.

helloSystem could give you the best of both worlds:

https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/

Just from looking at the first screenshot (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helloSystem/hello/master/s...)

The items in the global menu are aligned incorrectly. (notice how the baseline of the menu item title does not match the baseline of the shortcut)

It's still in beta (0.7 at the moment) so don't expect miracles.

You're wasting your time.

No 802.11ac, no declarative configurations (like in Nixos).

What's the point?

Not everybody got 802.11ac at home already and most people are fine with 802.11n speed for their personnal usage. I would say this is irrelevant for a large fraction of the population.

Also not everybody need declarative configuration, especially when talking about a monodevice scope.

802.11ac came out 2013.

And a lot of people only get a new access point when they either receive a new router from their providers or change providers.

This is not uncommon to have the same wireless access point for a decade or so and people are generally fine with it. Also most people don't even know there are different revisions of the wifi standard and if you say 802.11 they will just look at you with clueless eyes.

I am not saying it is ok for any OS to not support it but it doesn't necessarily affect everyone's life.

Some work is done on that front though: https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/80211ac

Sure most people don't upgrade their router very often but those people probably aren't the ones interested in using freebsd as their desktop, I doubt they have even heard of freebsd or would care to hear about it.

The type of person that will install freebsd on a laptop and then setup all the configuration is probably very techy and would want the best tech, os, wifi.

Hm, as far as I can tell FreeBSD has drivers for ac cards, but they only support WiFi 4 at the protocol level?

It's not just about speed. I live in an apartment block where so many people have got WiFi networks and Bluetooth devices that the 2.4GHz band has become heavily congested. These days, I need 802.11ac on the 5GHz band just to get a connection on my tablet in the bedroom to the router in the hallway ...

There is 5GHz N. Not as common in devices or routers though.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a 80211n device that _didn't_ support 5GHz.

A lot of low end consumer devices don't. For example the PS Vita supports N but not 5GHz, nor do most kindles until the latest Paperwhite. It was also super common for cheap $400 laptops in 2011 to have N but not 5Ghz support.

I believe Nintendo didn’t support it until the Switch, surprisingly - the WiiU was 2.4 only.

Not for the internet but Wii U uses 5GHz for streaming to the gamepad.

Guess that explains the poor range issue people cited back in its heydey.

To desperately cling to the past out of fear of the future.

While I'm sure we all understand your sentiment, I think you're missing the point. This isn't the future we /users/ want. It's the future that corporations, silly commities and greed-/arrogance-/bling-motivated decision makers are dictating to the rest of the world.

What we're witnessing in these Thinkpad, right-to-repair, yEaR oF tEh nix dEsKtop conversations, is people taking back control of the devices we own. At the cost of compromises the same decision makers are not willing to allow you to make.

It's easy to look at these case studys as outliers or edge cases as someone who probably lives in the first world, adding to the pile of e-waste by perpetuating and encouraging the behaviour supporting companies like Apple.

What I see as an IT engineer at mid-size MSP is the SMB/SME market and their staff struggle with adapting to the ever-changing technologies. I feel their pain, because I'm the one that has to make old work with new. Privateers and coders get to choose their environment for the most part. Businesses have baggage, standard operating procedures and a mix of requirements. And then you get people like Apple thinking we can all live wirelessly or with exorbitantly priced adapters and less choice as consumers of their products... it's arrogant and user-hostile.

One day you'll understand that everything it's cyclic. Flat interfaces will be toshed out for semi 3D interfaces such as the ones from Aqua/Haiku/Windows 9x and so on.

Most of the Linux solutions are overengineered, btw. They had to release Pipewire for everything as OpenBSD did with sndio. And yet ALSA adds a layer of cruft and complications. Sndio+OSS just works.

So, I think keeping yourself on a simple design path makes the future much easier.

For example, MTP on phones suck, up to the point that using SFTP with some server from FDROID makes the data sharing back and forth much, much better.

Ditto with rclone vs 200 providers with their own GUI for everything.

Or age and/or signify vs OpenSSL or GPG2 being used to encrypt files where those have options for everything encrypting/signing related.

MTP (not a Linux solution anyway) is several orders of magnitude simpler than SFTP, though (no encryption to begin with, albeit there is XML which sadly may compete in complexity).

Eh, MTP often doesn't work and USB stacks are far more tricky than Eth.

On transferring files sftp/mc works fine, while MTP often hangs.

That is my point; it is simpler and yet more problematic. "Simplicity rules" only works up to a point.

The future, as defined as what's a hot topic during next quarter's hype cycle.

I think the point is that the big two personal computer operating systems have become so user hostile that alternatives are looking good.

FreeBSD wouldn't be my choice either but for a mac refugee it makes sense.

What do you mean by hostile?

Subverting user’s intentions by doing things like resetting the default browser on every update, or forcing you into their App Store ecosystem by making it like pulling teeth to download an app from the internet and run it.

Doesn't sound critical at all.

How is Linux hostile?

Windows and OSX, not linux.

All the stupid stuff they force down your neck: must be a registered user in their system rather than just a local user. The app stores. The deprecation of perfectly good hardware. Forced updates on their schedule. Monitoring of user actions turned on by default. Changing preferences without asking.

All of it is getting in the way of you actually using your own device on your own terms.

How about ZFS?

It's easy to use zfs on Ubuntu.

It also integrates great with LXD (a nicer way to use containers).

Can someone explain to me why FreeBSD doesn't support 802.11ac?

Because blobs,almost certainly. Binary blobs which expect certain syscalls which Linux does and writing the FreeBSD equivalents is time consuming and expert knowledge driven.

A guess, is all.

No particular reason, really; it's being worked on: https://www.freebsd.org/status/report-2021-07-2021-09/#_inte...

>no declarative configurations (like in Nixos)

OpenBSD autoinstall and two scripts for desktop packages and daemons. The whole user config is a TGZ. Done, and much faster than setting up Nix OS env.

What about maintenance?

Almost nil. Upgrades: download bsd.rd from the new release, place it under /, reboot, boot bsd.rd, press U for (U)pgrade, wait, reboot, pkg_add -U && pkg_delete -a (to crack down orphans). Done.

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