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Comment by aeyes | Hacker News Reader

You know what would be even better? If you could reliably uninstall all this junk or not even install it at all.

Every time I hit some button on my keyboard and the Music app opens asking me to create an account I am reminded how hostile all commercial operating systems are.

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It's interesting, I've been using OpenBSD for the past couple years and it has _not once_ enraged me the way Windows and Mac do. I still use Windows for work, and own a ton of Macs (probably getting close to ~30 by now), but OpenBSD is the OS I use for most general computing stuff.

I mean, I'm using a GUI that is really primitive by comparison to Win/Mac (i3wm) but it's actually great. Extremely fast, efficient, and stays out of my way. There is literally no mechanism in the OS to pop up a notification or bounce an icon or blink anything at me. It couldn't interrupt me and piss me off even if some piece of software wanted to. It's amazing. Nothing updates on its own, and the OS runs very very few services or other background stuff -- basically only whatever I have explicitly configured and enabled. Again, awesome. I'm easily aware of every single process that runs on this machine, and if there's one I don't know about, there's comprehensive documentation about it, including how to configure it. That's honestly effectively impossible for someone using Mac or Windows.

Oh, I just installed a security patch in about 20 seconds. Open terminal (winkey->enter), "doas syspatch -c", type pass, see there's a patch, "doas syspatch" to apply it, done in 2 seconds. Once I reboot the newly-patched kernel is active. There is full documentation of the patch, including why it's needed, how the patch resolves the issue, and a diff of the patch is included.

I love OpenBSD…… as a server particularly as a DNS or a network gateway with pf as a firewall.

But, I cannot fathom how using OpenBSD on a Desktop/Laptop for personal computing would NoT enrage me everyday. The things I’d do on my personal computer :

1. Browse all bloated modern websites using a modern web browser - Firefox

2. Work with photos(personal) - edit them, crop them to share with someone, markup screenshots to put in docs etc.

3. Use PDFs without worrying about formats, markup on them as needed, fill forms on PDFs.

4. Media - playback audio and video. Without worrying about whether I have the right codecs or file formats.

Wouldn’t OpenBSD make me constantly fight against its opinionated safety first way of doing things? Sure, one can run Firefox on OpenBSD, but would it play YouTube and Netflix without making me pull my hair?

I can install ffmpeg, relevant codecs, PDF tools, Darktable or other Unix friendly photo tools, but wouldn’t that be a constant fight and tweaking to keep them running?

I haven't touched OpenBSD for a few years if I'm honest but one of the things that did not enrage me about it was that it didn't nag me to change anything once I'd got it working properly. I suspect that's part of it. There is a clear separation of OS and applications. Regarding all the other stuff I remember it mostly just worked. But of course that is within the realms of the particular package actually working in the first place, which is variable probability.

As for myself I got lazy and just use Windows 10. It doesn't enrage me if you turn off all the cloud shit, treat it like a file manager/window manager shell and run all your open source stuff on it. Again that works because there's a clear separation of OS and applications.

When you start mixing the two (hello Linux) it's where you get problems. I think snaps were an attempt to solve some of that (badly).

On Linux, I enjoy the idea that all the software can be interchanged. So there is no separation between the system and user installed software. For me, it’s difficult to grasp the minimalism of those other systems. When you clearly have your system as a rock that you cannot modify. I have very little experience (some theoretical and none practical) with BSDs, but it pains me there is a base system for macOS with an absolutely unused and not needed software, like Chess.

You can install *BSDs with only the things you want. Same like you can on Linux. However, the question of default packaging holds on both sides.

Trying installing the default .iso of Fedora workstation or Ubuntu-latest and see all the things Gnome brings along.. Maps, Photos, IM client, even a bundled browser (Evolution or something) that is based on Firefox but dependednt on the few Gnome packagers to keep up to date(instead of just letting the user download Firefox on their own or shipping the latest firefox).

Even Archlinux, if you install Gnome-desktop, you get all the cruft. You need to explicitly find a way to install just the minimal gnome desktop without all its apps.

OpenBSD however, for a server usecase, comes with a very cohesive, sane set of tools carefully maintained by the folks who ship OpenBSD. If anything, they are very conservative about adding stuff to that ecosystem.

> even a bundled browser (Evolution or something) that is based on Firefox

The Gnome web browser is based on WebKit (Safari) not Gecko (Firefox): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Web

re: Arch Linux. You don't have to install gnome-desktop. If you use a window manager like dwm or i3 just install those and forget about Gnome.

Oh wow, basically my story! With the difference I have no practical experience with BSDs yet (was eyeing FreeBSD for a while now), so I use very minimal barebones Arch Linux installation with sway wm. Why had you chose OpenBSD?

Sounds amazing!

Is there a good resource/link you could point me to that will get me started using OpenBSD?

I've always read it's quite particular about hardware, and also I'm not even sure if or how well it plays in a multi boot scenario?

Oh man, it gets worse than that. After updating to iOS 17 the other day, I said to my phone "play OverCast" (my podcast app). It used to start playing from that app. This time, it started playing a band called Overcast, and told me I had just started a 7 day free trial of Apple Music. What the actual fuck.

brb, starting a band called "Spotify" and opening a 24/7 convenience store called "Google Maps"

It's not a bug, it's a feature. People have done crazier things! Didn't Steve Jobs once say that part of the reason he named the company Apple was because it would be before Atari in the phone book? [1]

1: https://www.macworld.com/article/673923/why-is-apple-called-...).

Not just in the phone books. Ever wonder why the stock ticker has two A’s?

If you’re picking stocks by order of the alphabet you deserve what you get.

Which, incidentally, was a tremendous return.

Once upon a time, stocks were listed alphabetically in something called newspapers.

https://i.imgur.com/RfFM4cr.jpg

That's...genius.

You don't need iOS17 for Siri to do things like that, It hapeenes on many other versions of iOS (or in my case Homekit)

I realize it was possible before. My point is that now it's the only way for me to set the lights to be a color other than what my presets happened to be when I upgraded to iOS 17.

No I meant that Siri before iOS17 would have these problems.

It is not new to iOS 17 - well it might be for your setup but others have had these issues with earlier versions.

Meanwhile, at Apple: "Users really love the update! Trial signups are up 438% over the previous quarter!"

How is this "It gets worse"?

iOS has to assume what you mean with play OverCast. Maybe there are other people that wanted the device to play the band? This is such an edge-case which is easily solved by further specifying your prompt.

It's not just playing the wrong band / app. It's signing you up for a subscription. You still have time to cancel before you have to pay. But it's one more thing you have to worry about now.

It should have confirmed that you're fine with subscribing if that's what you have to do to listen to the band. And it's also fine to play the wrong band if you have a subscription already.

It knows a) whether you have overcast installed and when was it last used, b) whether you added the overcast band to your favourites or ever explicitly played one of their songs. I'm sure there's some tiny section where the the extra prompt would be useful, but they could be so much better than that.

How is that legal? Jeebus.

You absolutely need this: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes

One of the best comments in this thread. Thanks.

Alternatively run:

  launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist

I tried it but unfortunately it also disables media control (pause/skip) from the keyboard in other applications.

Somehow on migrating to a new iPhone the music app decided it needed full notification permissions, apparently because a new Taylor swift album is of the same notification level as an incoming missile strike.

At least it’s easy enough to turn off.

At least they didn't "gift" you the album like they did with U2

Oh man, I have never loaded music on my phone, so whenever the car starts, it plays the first song on the iPhone. I hate U2! And I hate that they’re receiving money each I do this!

Do they though? It was a gifted digital 'purchase', not a stream. Anyway, seems you can contact Apple support to permanently remove the album from your account.

Oh yeah, esp. funny if you always hated U2, and suddenly it appears in the middle of your music collection. Same with "Alone at home", not quite my taste.

Music has always asked for notification permissions.

It's useful for people like me who want to know when new albums are released.

Reliably removing the U2 album from Apple Music seems impossible. Deleting the album which has helpfully redownloaded itself is now a ritual before I start my car - otherwise it starts playing as soon as bluetooth connects - which is just what I need when I'm pulling away in busy traffic.

“A a a a a very good song” to the rescue. https://music.apple.com/au/album/a-a-a-a-a-very-good-song-si...

Also available on iTunes for a dollar, search for Samir Mezrahi (the blessed soul who made this).

That's hilarious. Actually Apple support have just removed U2 permanently from my account. Feeling mildly victorious.

I agree with you. Apple Music is particularly annoying. I recommend this free little utility: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes

I had to mildly fight with my company’s security team to get this app allowed on my work mac.

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