[JeremyMorgan]

I really want to try this out. I was a heavy FreeBSD user for many years in the 2000s, and I drifted back into Linux. One thing I will say for FreeBSD, it's harder to get dialed in but once it is, it's very solid. I think with enough tinkering FreeBSD would run really well on a MBP, I just wonder if it would provide a lot of advantages over OSX to make it worth the time.

[noobermin]

Random question for you, how does the shell experience on FreeBSD compare to MacOS? Linux?

[tachion]

Why would you care at all about something like that? No matter if I am on Linux, BSD or OSX, I am installing the shell I like&want to use and don't spend more time in default bash/tcsh/whatever else of the OS than it takes to perform install and run `chsh`. It's like literally one of the last things that'd weight on my OS choice.

[mveety]

A shell is a shell for the most part. The details can be a bit different (like your $PATH), but otherwise its largely the same.

[JeremyMorgan]

Yep. Mostly the same. Hence the reason I question why FreeBSD might be worth it. The overlap of OSX and FreeBSD at the shell is quite great, but you can't run a lot of OSX apps on FreeBSD. I'd venture to guess you could run a lot more FreeBSD apps on OSX.

[noobermin]

try

   rm -rf somedir/

vs

   rm somedir/ -rf

Linux (the former) allows me to be lazy while MacOS (the latter) forces me to hit crtl-a and insert -rf.

[loeg]

GNU rm (coreutils) vs BSD rm.

[aorth]

I will never get used to the trailing slash on source arguments in BSD cp (that copies directory contents rather than the directory itself)! The first thing I do on an OS X machine is install GNU coreutils.

[loeg]

Me either. I've also got a habit of adding '-rf' as the last argument to 'rm' so I can safely tab complete things in my home directory without a mistaken "enter" press nuking everything.

[seschwar]

I'm used to that from rsync. I find it quite handy.

[noobermin]

Major correction, the former is MacOS and the latter is Linux allowed (options can be before positional arguments).

[lmm]

I usually install a GNU shell and use that - I don't use FreeBSD out of idealism but because it works better. Things like ctrl-T make it a little nicer than Linux, but on the whole it's pretty similar.

[PaulRobinson]

OS X userland was forked from FreeBSD 15 years back.

It's not that far removed even now, although config is standard /etc