Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Why Do I Use Linux Instead Of BSD?" video.

@luckyowl10 It's not harder to use, and I have no idea where people got that idea from. For the most part things just work, if you've got hardware that's listed it will work, with Linux I've found it to be a bit hit or miss as to whether or not supported hardware will work as advertised. Yes, with the more mainstream versions you have to install the GUI separately, but there's also versions where that's done for you. And at any rate, with modern OSes, you should just do an install in a virtual machine to start with anyways, so that you don't have to deal with the inconvenience of living with any mistakes that you make. And, I'd advise everybody do that when possible for any new OS.
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It shouldn't and there's a literal man page covering the layout of the folders. man hier should answer pretty much all the common questions. As far as Linux goes, it really depends on what you're wanting to do, there's very little that I'd care to do with Linux that I can't do with FreeBSD personally.
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@babyboomertwerkteam What justifies that restriction on use? *BSD hasn't had any real issues with attracting developers and contributions from businesses. People keep saying that Linux is more free, but the fact of the matter is that there's somewhere between little and no evidence to justify that restriction.
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@zizlog_sound Mac OS wasn't, Mac OSX is. Or, more specifically, OSX is based on Darwin OS, which itself uses FreeBSD for the userland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) OSX itself is basically just Darwin OS with a proprietary UI over top of it. You used to be able to install Darwin OS on other computers, just without the Apple specific UI.
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Not true, if you actually read up on the history of the OS, you'd know that the reason has more to do with the Linux community having a contingent of hardliners that are willing to set ethics aside in growing the brand. There's also far more focus on growth at the expense of quality than there is on the *BSD side of things. It leads to things like alpha features making their way into stable releases and filesystems being included that aren't anywhere near good enough for production use and expecting the user to know that this stable release isn't stable. This isn't something that you'd see from the BSD camp. Also, I absolutely do deny it, you cannot add restrictions and then claim that something is more free, that is just complete nonsense and people like you are a great bit of what turns people off from Linux. Why install an OS that has such snobbery and elitism going on?
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Not really, Linux focuses on a bunch of flashy stuff, but much of it won't work. I remember one distro required a physical keyboard to be plugged in in order to log into the system even though I was using a bluetooth keyboard. I had to reinstall Ubuntu dozens of times due to filesystem corruption due to an unstable filesystem being used. It's easy to look like you're ahead when you can't be bothered to get the basics right. Hell, the first time I tried Linux it didn't even have a real package management system. You had to go and manually download all the packages that you needed, even though FreeBSD had a functioning package management system for years at that point.
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@anonymunsichtbar3715 That's also where most of the issues I've had with Linux come from. Because these are all independent projects, you get problems like some projects sucking in all sorts of functionality that they shouldn't have and leading to conflicts where one package will require one set of audio libraries and another will require a separate incompatible set and neither of the sets of libraries actually plays well with the other. It's massively annoying. *BSD is it's own thing and on the whole better engineered. That's not to say that Linux doesn't have its benefits, just realize that things are far less consistent in terms of functioning. I've never had FreeBSD dump me to a log in with a broken UI or file system that's clearly alpha quality that will require a reinstallation every time that I restart the computer, like some Linux distros have.
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@babyboomertwerkteam That's technically true, but misleading, you can't include it in a closed source project if you want to distribute it, that's a pretty big restriction on use, if you can't sell it without including the source with the distribution and have to license your stuff to match.
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It's the Internet, yes civility and kind language is nice, but it's the Internet, anybody who cares that much probably shouldn't be online.
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@Sumire973 Having installed both a fair number of times, I have to call BS. Unless you've got weird hardware that isn't supported under *BSD, the install process isn't appreciably harder.
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I've been using it as my main desktop for many years. Sure, there are a few apps that don't work and don't have replacements, but most of those can run under emulation. I think the last time where it wasn't a viable desktop for typical use was back in olden times, when you needed special extensions to browse the internet. These days, pretty much everything that a typical user needs works just fine without much hassle.
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I definitely recommend that people use a VM where possible whenever they're wanting to try a new OS. I don't personally get what the issues are with the *BSD filesystem logic, there's an entire man page set up covering the layout of the filesystem. (hier for those interested) Personally, I find the Linux filesystem to be slightly more confusing as there's an additional /opt root that seems to be used inconsistently by various programs. It's not a significant issue, I go back and forth pretty often with Linux running on my Raspberry Pis and in an emulator most of the time. But, really most of the folks claiming Linux superiority are making mountains out of mole hills and greatly exaggerating the differences. Both sets of OSes work just fine for typical users, but anybody claiming that Linux is just better is full of it. There are a few things that Linux is better at, but they tend to be more specific niches.
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That will likely change over time, Linux doesn't have any filesystem with the same level of reliability and consistency. But that being said, unless somebody has specific software or hardware requirements that work on Linux rather than *BSD, it shouldn't be a foregone conclusion that the install will be Linux based. Many Linux programs can be run directly on FreeBSD with the appropriate compatibility mode installed and that's assuming that there isn't a version already compiled for FreeBSD or a source port of it. ZFS on Linux is a significant problem that I hope they will solve, there shouldn't be so many different ways of installing it which all use slightly differing feature sets making it a problem to switch between them.
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That was the original. These days it's mostly FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, they have slightly different goals, but they all originated with Unix back at Berkeley before being completely rewritten.
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Honestly, this is what turns people off of Linux. First off, it's a blatant lie to claim the discrepancy is that large. If it were that large, BSD would already be dead. Not on the receiving end of decades of "BSD is dead" hurr hurr hurr jokes. Secondly, look at the various companies using BSD OSes, it's not exactly a set of 3rd strong losers. Netflix alone is absolutely massive. But, more to the point, we need an option that is more focused on stability and usability than whatever the current popular trend is. FreeBSD isn't terribly flashy, but it mostly just works and has almost everything I could possibly need.
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I haven't had issues with that in decades. Even 20 years ago, the main hang ups were graphics drivers and flash. Well, we no longer use flash and all the major GPU manufacturers are either using open source drivers or are in the process of opening them. Unless you need some sort of weird niche bit of hardware, chances are that FreeBSD will handle it just fine. I can't recall the last time I had to worry about it, things generally just work.
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Wait, you progressed from Vim to Emacs? That's backwards, once you've got the basics of Vi down, there's little reason to switch for text editing.
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Honestly, in my experience there's really not enough pros or cons either way to make the statement that one is objectively better than the other. Yes, Linux has somewhat better support from 3rd parties than any of the *BSD do, but I've also had far more issues with random annoying bugs with Linux than with *BSD, a large part of that comes from the fact that it's a kernel and a bunch of unrelated 3rd party software bundled into an OS that can occasionally have issues. Really, they're both good options and unless a person has specific software or hardware that dictates one choice over the other, they're both good choices. Personally, I use FreeBSD just because I got annoyed with those little annoyances that never seemed to get fixed, nothing super major, but annoying nonetheless.
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Not any more than Linux or Windows is.
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Why would they have that goal? Apart from the default install not giving you a GUI without you installing it, I'm not really sure what else would need to be done to make that happen. And there are OSes that are basically just FreeBSD with that last bit done for you. (Not that it's that hard once you get the hang of it and you can always learn that part in a VM without having to be without a computer while configuring it)
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@Sumire973 That's the thing, FreeBSD has basically just one installation with configuration options to tailor it for various uses. I see a fairly decent list of desktop oriented flavors here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BSD_operating_systems, but there's a reason why so many of them have failed, once you understand how to install and configure the GUI, there's little point in using a version that's specifically tailored to desktop use. As long as you've got a supported GPU, setting it up isn't that hard these days. Most of the time Xorg will figure out the configuration on its own without much interaction from the user.
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And that's completely valid. The honest truth is that for most people, it's simply a matter of preference. Yes, there are pros and cons either way, but with a few exceptions, it's really not an imperative. Both will get the job done just fine.
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@oraclejmt Apart from some obscure hardware, what precisely is *BSD missng that can't easily be rectified? Going back a couple decades that was largely true, but these days, it's got support for all the things that you're likely to want, unless you want something that is obscure or niche.
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Objectively? I've been using it as my main desktop for many years now. Apart from a couple specific Windows only programs that don't have good opensource alternatives, I don't have any need for anything other than FreeBSD on any sort of regular basis.
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@poudink5791 FreeBSD isn't going anywhere any time soon. It's just far too common of a server OS for that to happen any time soon. What's more because there are so few restrictions on use of the source code, there's little reason for companies to ditch it.
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Why not install it in a VM and see if you like it?
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@anonymunsichtbar3715 There's a different philosophy here. Linux makes you download a different distro or installation disc depending upon what GUI you prefer to install. *BSD lets you download just one image and then just install whatever GUI you like. Or, you can get one of the desktop oriented flavors, but by default you get a CLI interface and the choice of what to install over the top of that.
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It's not years away, unless you include negative numbers. I've used Linux and I currently use FreeBSD, there were basically no sacrifices made in doing so. The only issue I've had is the failure of online backup services to support FreeBSD. It makes backups expensive if I don't go the route of using an emulator, which is mildly annoying. But, FreeBSD can do pretty much all the normal tasks that people typically expect out of their OS, it's mostly just the same FUD that the Linux community has been spreading over the course of the last several decades. It rings less and less true with every year.
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