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by IgorPartola 280 days ago
So you more or less want a BSD system. Have you tried them? They are a joy to use, can have far better performance than Linux, and have nice and predictable upgrade schedules. The base system is small and very usable out of the box. And documentation tends to be excellent.

In other words, with your requirements what are you still doing on Linux?
3 comments
grep_name 279 days ago
I've been curious about BSD in the past -- the thing that stops me is that I like to play with software that requires containers (docker) and I'm not sure if I'd ever get used to the difference between the core gnu cli utils.

The other thing that worries me is that I've had a lot of trouble building software that mainly supports BSD from source on linux machines. I'm worried if I switch to BSD, a lot of the software I want won't be available in the package manager, which would be fine, but I'm worried that building from source will also be a pain and binary releases for linux will not be compatible. Sounds like a lot of pain to me.

I'd be happy to be corrected if these are non-issues though.

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IgorPartola 279 days ago
You can install GNU coreutils out of the package repo no problem. Software packages are mostly available except closed source stuff that is Linux-only at which point you would use the Linux compat layer and it mostly works.

Docker is Linux-only for now but there is movement in that area. BSD had jails first and there is work on making generic containers work across multiple operating systems, including BSD. But I think the point of using BSD is to not bring Linux with you. Try their way and see how you like it.

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vascocosta 280 days ago
A long time ago I have used all BSDs and loved them. Eventually the performance of Linux hooked me back, but I guess it's always a good time to go BSD again. I miss the predictability of the upgrades.
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iamtedd 280 days ago
What are you talking about? Are you emphasising "bad" for effect, or is this an acronym? Please give examples.

Googling "bad operating system" returns useless results.

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IgorPartola 280 days ago
Autocorrect strikes again. I fixed it and it sent it right back. I swear it works better on coffee.
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joelwilliamson 280 days ago
He probably typed BSD, and it got autocorrected to BAD.
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BobbyTables2 280 days ago
Gentoo really missed an opportunity there.

They could have been the “Build Always Distribution” (BAD)

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Vinnl 280 days ago
I think they meant BSD, but took me a bit.
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