8 Mar
2024
8 Mar
'24
12:28 p.m.
On Thu, 7 Mar 2024, Larry McVoy wrote:
So I'm a SunOS guy, got there just after SunOS
4.0, contributed to 4.1,
really contributed to 4.1.1 and 4.1.3. I loved SunOS.
SunOS 4.1.4: pure bliss... But we know what happened next :-(
FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to
hire me a while
back. While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I know, I walked
the code), FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s. Raise your hand if you have
installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years. That "UI" for partitioning the
disks, so arcane. The whole install experience is _awful_.
Well, OK, in approx order :-)
As a FreeBSD nut, consider yourself asked...
User since, oh, when BSD/OS got borged, I guess.
And I've seen worse UIs... Mind you, that SunOS installer was great!
Now, hands up all those who partially overlapped root with swap etc (on
any *nix box)...
SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD. But
BSD is so dead it
is not even funny. Linux is light years ahead. Here is an example from
more than 20 years ago. I was installing RedHat Linux and the machine I
was installing on didn't have a mouse. The installer was graphical and
it was just easier to tab through the options than go find a mouse.
You like that abomination known as "systemd"? As for mice, I always kept
a couple in the drawer (serial, RF, etc).
I'd love it if BSD had kept up but it has not.
Linux is way better.
Yeah, all the bloat is annoying but we are not running on 64KB PDP-lls.
L1 is that size, L2 and L3 are bigger. Main memory is many orders of
magnitude bigger, I'm typing this on a 32GB memory laptop. It's fine.
I'm typing this on a Mac 8GB laptop, into my FreeBSD 512MB (yes) server
(it works; I can't afford anything better on my pension).
Oh, I've also used OpenBSD, but since you practically need permission to
even fart then I'd only recommend it as a firewall.
It's all abut horses for courses: OpenBSD for a firewall, FreeBSD for its
amazing ports, NetBSD to run on weird hardware, and a Mac for fun :-)
The only reason that I have a Penguin (if I can just revive it) was to run
stuff that doesn't seem to exist elsewhere; I haven't missed it...
-- Dave