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Comment by christophilus | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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