That's funny because i don't even know a reason to use Linux these days.
And since there is the Linux-Foundation who invests whopping 5% of their money into the Linux Kernel, an opensource alternative is always good to have.
I’m a big fan of the BSDs, but if you’re talking about the desktop, Proton and Steam, WiFi support, and (for me) Niri. You can get Niri working, probably, with some effort, but it comes out of the box on Fedora and Arch. The case of Niri is representative, in my limited experience, of the general case. The dev tooling I use always supports Linux as a 1st class citizen, but rarely supports the BSDs.
Well there is proton and steam on FreeBSD and i can even play Elden Ring and X4 for 2 minutes.....then my machine resets because there is no way to adjust the AMD-GPU fans, so i made a bhyve Win11-VM with passthrough to the discrete GPU and Bluetooth (PS4 controller), and now i can play everything, even my beloved Gold-Box Games with the GBC.
>WiFi support
Yeah that's really a problem, but i just use my Laptop for work so ~6 MB/s is good enough for me, otherwise i would use FreeBSDWifibox it's a hack but hey we use Unixes right? ;)
>Niri is representative
See what Niri is for you, ZFS is for me, i could say that the ZFS-module is representative (on mainstream distros) for Linux and we are both right, FreeBSD and Linux are both not perfect.
>dev tooling I use always supports Linux as a 1st class citizen, but rarely supports the BSDs.
I don't know what "1st class citizen" means, if it works it works, i often use dev-tools where Mac and Windows seam to be the "1st class citizen" but if they work they work.
So yes, there are problems like the Overheating AMD-GPU and Wifi but apart from that i am super happy with FreeBSD, and most important everyone is happy with the OS/Distro choice one made.
For WiFi you should really try bhyve with pass through to an OpenBSD guest. I get wifi speeds comparable to what I got with Alpine(wifibox), but a much nicer environment. Not particularly difficult to setup or maintain.
I don't use a Slack Client but the Web one, and i don't use Spotify.
>Well, there's one reason to use Linux, lol
True, you have a point to compare two proprietary Blobs, oh BTW is Adobe and nearly ever AAA-Game supporting Linux or do you need Wine/Proton (that Windows not emulator) thing?
And to be clear a LinuxJail is actually NOT using the Linux Kernel but the GNU-Userland ;) so no Linux present, Wine is the ~same as a LinuxJail from your viewpoint...but without isolation ;)
Linux (Wine):
Windows -> Linux SystemCall-translator
FreeBSD (Linxulator):
Linux -> FreeBSD SystemCall-translator
With more or less your Words:
>Well, there's one reason to use Windows (Wine), lol - to run all the apps on Linux that Linux doesn't support.
> I don't use a Slack Client but the Web one, and i don't use Spotify.
The comment you were replying to was talking in general terms so I thought you were as well.
> And to be clear a LinuxJail is actually NOT using the Linux Kernel but the GNU-Userland
Huh, that means even less stuff will run. I thought it was more than just an emulation layer.
> To be short, double lol
Not sure what this means. Long and short of it is though the original commenter was right IMO. The BSDs are generally the OS of hobbyists and sometimes contrarians, and it doesn't make sense these days when there are better options in most situations. If often makes as much sense as running Hurd or P9.
OK? Someone said what about apps that only run on Linux, you mentioned you run them in a linux jail.
I like the BSD, mainly Net, but I don't try to force them to be a desktop OS when they are not suited for that, and so don't try running Linux stuff under them.
Besides, even it's it's an emulation layer, you're still basically running the linux userland, and we both know the FreeBSD kernel isn't significantly different or better for most desktop uses.
> Since you know best what makes sense (by not knowing what FreeBSD even can and the difference between emulation and translation) perfect self-report.
Oh, I'm perfectly familiar with FreeBSD. I just don't try and use it as a desktop OS for the sake of being different. You might like it just fine, and maybe you're doing some tinkering with something BSD adjacent so it makes sense to run it. But objectively for most users and cases, it's the inferior option for desktop computing.
You're here trying to argue it's as good or better than Linux, if I haven't misunderstood your position, and I don't think that's something you can support at all. You can give up if you like, but it won't be because I thought linux support on FreeBSD was more than an emulation layer, it will be because you can't support your position.
How's 802.11ax and 802.11av support? Bluetooth work fine? Realtime audio multiplexing? What if you want to run a newer game and the FreeBSD version of Wine hasn't backported enough support yet?
There's so many apps and hardware that won't work well on FreeBSD, or won't work at all, because making it work isn't a priority of the project. That's just a fact.
FreeBSD has good ZFS support, and nice package update cycle (quarterly + ongoing security updates), halfway between rolling release and point release, coppled with the stable "core" part of the system.
Hardware support is shitty, even worse than OpenBSD, and it tells a lot. 12th-gen Intel integrated video driver is scheduled to appear only in September 2024.
remember BSDs are chosen by companies to whom linux is license-toxic. if they distribute hardware, like apple, gpl is poison.
this is a way to use your taxes to get free (as in beer, primarily) software they can ship on their products. less other companies can easily use that code the better.
Half is definitely an exaggeration for LinuxKPI modules that cover WiFi and GPU drivers.
Still, most of radeon/amdgpu DRM driver is MIT-licensed and doesn't require abiding by the GPL (not sure about other drivers as I don't use them, but I assume licenses vary).
Someone is going to be the lead architect. If BSD works as well as Linux but the guy in charge has a preference for BSD, that's enough for them to go BSD.
> I don't even know a reason to use FreeBSD these days apart of being a FreeBSD enthusiast.
In addition to the technical reasons other people have given, just running on a slightly "exotic" platform is often sufficient to avoid most of the common exploits. Not because there are inherently less vulnerabilities on your platform, but because it's less likely to be an explicit target.
it boost rate of R&D and innovation in EU so statistics look better. It reminds me a story told by my professor - years ago (70s) he implemented accounting system for some company and later noticed a serious bug which made it unusable. It wasn't a problem because system was never deployed - it was needed so the (state owned, because it was Poland) company could report deployment of innovation.
Very cynical, but wrong in this case. The point of the sovereign tech fund[0] is to throw some (relatively small in the scheme of things) money at open source infrastructure that everyone relies on, no matter if that infrastructure itself is German, or even European. Basically, as their graphics on their homepage allude to, aiming to improve https://xkcd.com/2347/
IMO this is exactly the common-sense investments that every country should be making in their own self interest, and is one of the things that Germany is actually doing right.
Some (former) apple users in my small sphere that now also run FreeBSD mentioned feeling happy about helping to ensure there will always be well-tested BSD/MIT licensed code Apple then can incorporate/use.
I don't even know a reason to use FreeBSD these days apart of being a FreeBSD enthusiast.