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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

I tell people that I haven't looked forward to new features in the 'California' era like I did in the 'Cat' era. Now, I worry about what Apple will break or take away.

If Microsoft wasn't so intent on spying and advertising to me, I might consider them. I get the feeling I will switch to a BSD eventually.

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I’ve been leaning the same way. I’m curious why you also lean towards BSD instead of Linux?

It’s a gut feeling for me after watching the Linux ecosystem churn a lot and seeing BSDs with well documented core systems and the “core/ports” distinction make clear what is and isn’t really supported

I'm much more familiar with OpenBSD and FreeBSD on the server-side, and I don't feel real comfortable with Linux. The two biggest vendors, Red Hat and Ubuntu, don't really give the warm fuzzies. Maybe something like System 76 backs.

What about plain Debian :) if you’re comfortable with BSD then Debian should be a cakewalk for you.

The funny thing is I tried to setup and Arch Linux box. I can setup OpenBSD with thinking with all the partitions and such, but that Arch Linux install was just a bad time. I'll try Debian when I get back to work. We are replacing our Samba server and the BSDs aren't real current given some changes the Samba team made.

I have tried all three and much comfortable with NetBSD.

Well, don't skip the DragonFly folks. I've had the four main one up and running at different times.

There is always OpenDarwin/PureDarwin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

I prefer BSD to Linux for a few reasons. Firstly, BSD is not encumbered by GPL. Also, any BSD is a complete operating system while Linux requires distros subject to the whims of their creators, which seem to focus on form over function. Any long term stability is almost accidental, and there is no standard edition of Linux. Lastly and I think most importantly, the centralized BSD ports system is more trustworthy than an untracked number of repositories and sources. Actually, these complaints about Linux aren't about Linux, they're mostly about GNU. Linux is just a kernel, and it's fine, really. GNU is the problem.

Agreed. Also all BSDs have different characteristics.

Linux it self can't use GPLv3 shows that it is not innovation supporting License

> Firstly, BSD is not encumbered by GPL. Also, any BSD is a complete operating system while Linux requires distros subject to the whims of their creators, which seem to focus on form over function

This "BSD is a complete operating system" that you speak of... Do you mean FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragnonFly BSD, Darwin?

Thankfully BSD is not subject to teh whims of any distro?

Each of {Free,Open,Net,DragonFly}BSD is its own operating system, complete with tree, system call interface and ports tree. This is not the same as the distribution model Linux has - the BSDs have diverged substantially from one another.

Has anything workable been made from Darwin in the past decade or has Apple mostly left that community high and dry?

Coming from macOS, there’s a certain cohesiveness that one comes to expect that is often absent with Linux, with conventions being mere suggestions and things generally being all over the place. The BSDs aren’t perfect but certainly much better in this regard.

It’s unrealistic but a Linux distro that forked as many packages as possible to make them follow conventions and be proper desktop citizens would be interesting.

Check out the KDE edition of Fedora. Fedora is a rock solid OS and KDE is a rock solid desktop environment. Reminds me of what I always wanted Windows to be.

You can go with their default edition (GNOME) if you want something that looks like a MacOS clone right out of the box, but the actual user experience is so different (and IMO so much worse) that I can't recommend it for anyone interested in switching.

Funnily enough I've been considering going the opposite way. I'm on Windows, Android and iPadOS right now, but this diversity of operating systems means nothing integrates well, so it's not a great experience.

Buying into the Google or Microsoft ecosystems would improve things on this front, but this seems not great w.r.t. privacy, which is why I'm thinking of going all in on Apple.

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