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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • While you’re not wrong there are still FreeBSD pain points particularly around wifi that remind me of 2007 when I first moved to Linux (and then FreeBSD). They’re working on it and have some funding put aside to pay developers to help remedy this. Laptops also are very likely to have odd and end edge cases, for instance my chromebook needs to pass audio over i2c which FreeBSD doesn’t support and even linux needs some hacky scripts to run through the commands to enable this (and the script needed an update because THIS particular model was slightly different from others by the same brand…). Linux in this regard moves much faster in getting support going and requires little to no pain especially in comparison. I love FreeBSD and use it everywhere I possilby can but there’s certainly things it’s just not easy/practical to use it for right now.


  • I use FreeBSD on a desktop as a server and for desktop usage with a touchscreen to run a virtual pipe organ that needs an obscene amount of resources to run. There’s a few things that I see as pros:

    1. Zfs on root/by default. Absolutely love zfs and not having to screw around with dkms/kernel issues etc to get it running is a huge plus imo

    2. Jails - I cannot stand docker. It’s opaque and I’m stuck trusting that whatever image I’m downloading is updated/secured and or running multiple extra containers to stack together. With jails I spent my time setting up the jail once (installing services etc), and using a jail manager (bastille) I can maintain what I think is better control of the internals and updates etc. the commands mirror the os as well which is nice

    3. Integrated world - the way bsd integrates the core system and separates out the packages means most security updates just need a service restart not a full reboot so uptime between OS patches can be months at a time. They’re also very conservative about changing how the core system functions so how I install/set up/maintain the system in 2007 is the same as today.

    4. The manual. Anything I need to know when adding services including edge use cases is in the manual on their website. Much cleaner written than the arch manual, and has a pdf download available if you aren’t going to always have the internet (and a terminal interfaced manual option to download).

    For my usage there’s not much I can think of for cons, but I will say laptops and particularly WiFi suffer currently. There’s funding and works in progress to fix this but still idk I’d use it on a laptop today without carefully checking support for the hardware like I would’ve with old school Linux. They’ve come a long way recently with edge cases for instance I’m currently running a windows vm with gpu pass thru using their bhyve vm manager, something that wasn’t supported a year ago, so I am optimistic the funding will help in the next few years on some of the laptop issues.





  • If your kids software is available in Ubuntu maybe? At a glance I’d wonder how power efficient it would be (my $100 Walmart tablet lasts all week with light usage, I doubt this could compare), and would have to wonder as well on gpu performance. It’s likely not optimized yet so idk I’d trust 800 mhz as enough.

    I think the article sums it up best:

    RISC-V computing is a promising field but best ploughed by developers, early adopters, and tech enthusiasts at present. RISC-V chip performance is improving, but it’s not “there” for mainstream adoption — yet.

    It’d be a ton of fun to tinker with and if you have the money to risk I’d say go for it! But I wouldn’t buy this for a kid unless I had the extra $150 to potentially get them a normal android tablet if this didn’t work as well as hoped.











  • Because every time I’m reminded the underlying OS exists it’s always something negative.

    On windows: Forced restarts and updates that take over 5x as long as my Linux (or FreeBSD build), ui that constantly undoes what I customized, ads and preinstalled malware essentially like candy crush even on builds from Microsoft directly, worse performance with a much higher number of crashes under load on my current box, and no auto login/name any simple customization without screwing around with registry editor to name just the simple things. More advanced problems include no hypervisor built in to the home version, everything is pay to unlock features my Linux install does for free, no zfs software raid for storage safekeeping, most fixes when I do have errors involve googleing cryptic hex codes and being told to run fsck/chdsk as the only solution for often times hours of searching before finally finding the actual answer - not to mention most other fixes being to download a library/binary of the sketchiest sounding website ever that i can’t verify isn’t a virus.

    On linux or even FreeBSD which took a bit to get installed to my liking i may have put work in up front but its like 3 hours at most of my time for 6+ years of stability and proper functioning to avoid all of the above plus no microsoft telemetry etc. I switched when i first tried Vista and even today every time i have to use Microsoft’s horrific excuse for an OS it is heartburn inducing.