network settings. if-up scripts? NetworkManager? Are we already supposed to use that systemd-network thingy or is it still not ready ? I just need to add an IP address in addition to the one given by DHCP...
who is managing /etc/resolv.conf today?
(my regular frustrations when dealing with both Ubuntu and Rocky Linux hosts..)
Distributions I prefer have never used NetworkManager and haven't changed network configuration in a long time. RHEL and its rebuilds have used NM for what feels like an eternity. Ubuntu is the odd one out here with its constant churn, afaik.
Same with firewall wrappers like ufw and firewalld. Either your distribution uses one and you just use whatever has been chosen for you, or it doesn't and you go with nftables (or iptables-nft if you prefer).
This is all only really a problem if your organization uses a bunch of distributions instead of standardizing on one, but then you probably have a lot more other serious problems than learning how to configure your firewall...
As a counterpoint, I evaluated FreeBSD for a project about a year ago and was really put off by its primitive service management (compared to systemd which I know pretty well and use its features extensively, they really do help in your daily work), and the three firewalls which all seem to be approximately equally supported and you never really know where to put your time. (Unfortunately, I had to pass the OS for other reasons which have no relation to its technical merit.)
I really don't get these criticisms, you have choice, having choices doesn't make a system bad, makes you have to make your choices, which can also be going towards systems where stuff is standard
Software is utilitarian in nature, the goal is the task, but, how do you accomplish a task with an infinite amount of tools? and not only that, but how can you be sure that the tool is secure and stable?
Networkmanager seems to be what things are standardizing on these days. Which, while for some reason I've always avoided networkmanager and used various combinations as alternatives, I'm all for having one most common standard networking utility for Linux.
I usually settle on networkmanager, since there's not a great alternative for dealing with wifi. However, it often delegates to a giant broken pile of fail.
Things can be much simpler on machines that connect via ethernet (including VMs).
This seems like not the best example since FreeBSD has 3 implementations that may be in use depending on the whims of the sysadmin.
More importantly, doing a simple kldstat would tell you which firewall is running. On Ubuntu (as an example) I have no idea if I should be using nftables, iptables or if ufw is working or not.
This is a little like comparing FreeBSD with macOS. Their userlands share similarities but they are different operating systems.
Also, at least with Ubuntu, switching to a new LTS means that most administration tools have been replaced with different (usually buggier) ones, so knowledge of the old release doesn't necessarily transfer either.
It wasn't this way in the early days, but the community focus stopped aligning with end user interest about a decade go. At that point fragmentation + complexity exploded.
SystemD is changing things up a bit and packaging up all the "boilerplate" and making things more consistent across distros, which is convenient sure. I joke that the old adage "GNU/Linux" should be updated to "SystemD/Linux".
My preferences have fallen on a combination of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Manjaro Linux, with FreeBSD my main operating system.
The main draw backs are
1) poorer wifi support *
2) non-existing bluetooth support
But the main advantages of FreeBSD
1) FreeBSD is a source distribution first, always has been, always will be. 2) The most permissive software licenses are prefered, which I think is really cool 3) By far the best package managers. both ports and pkg are simpler to use than anything I have tried from any other distribution. I know some people swear by Slackware, Gentoo and Arch, but in general their package management do not appeal to me. Plus it always seems like the linux distributions are either source or binary. Sure, you can usually do both(except for the source first distributions) on most linux distributions, it's usually inferior to ports/pkg.
4) first class ZFS support
5) I get to run the same system on my desktop as I do on my production systems which I consider a big advantage.
* https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=wifibox
I have resolved the WIFI support by running wifibox, a tiny virtualized Linux vm running on bhyve. It gives me a 20-fold increase in speed! Coincidentally, it’s based on Aline Linux, which the blog post is all about!
When I want to play games, I reboot to Windows or Manjaro, which takes about 60 seconds... Both fairly stable and easy to maintain operating systems. I like MacOS as well, but I don't have any apple computers anymore.
Today you can get ZFS packages from contrib in Debian and run it for several years with no problems. I know because I did that from Debian 9 (2017) through Debian 12 (2023) and still going. Ironically, Debian 9 took over that ZFS pool from a FreeBSD server, and there is not one part of that migration that I regretted.
Afair, for switching from 20.04 to 22.04 I had to ensure network configs are under netplan and that's all.
What's imimportant as well, there is no rush to switch to newer LTS, no problem to plan and test migration over 1 year be needed as old LTS is still supported.
It may not be that much of a problem in practice, I deal with multiple distributions because for new servers, we pick 'm based on expected future support, and they're only a bootstrap to docker/podman which is the great 'equalizer'. So the inconsistencies are only a problem until our Ansible scripts have learned the difference and when we need to debug an issue. Not that often fortunately, once the configurations are in place things are generally stable.
I love Linux but the total mess with networking and sound is disheartening. It is a pile of crap.
I do not care if this is this or another solution, but for fucks sake - let's have one system and not five that step on each other. This is infuriating.