Thinking I should start to make a choice on my future in UNIX: Slackware or FreeBSD?
 

With all due respect towards the maintainers both official and unofficial of Slackware, as well as the Slackware community, I want to come out and say this.

As much as it pains me, I do not agree with the direction Linux is being guided down by the upstream developers as well as organizations and companies that do not have the best interest of the free open source software community, the end-users, or the network and system administrators at the forefront of developments to make the end results of the Linux experience better. A lot of effort is being made to "Dumb down Linux", almost to the point to where the novice users can simply have a clone of another unmentioned operating system that is another Mac-like or Windows-like point-click-and-go, rather than an operating system with a higher learning curve to help you rethink what an operating system is and how you need to learn how to use it.

For me Slackware has been the best example of what a dive into the Linux side of the UNIX spectrum should be. You the user and admin learning about the system, not just at the fundamental levels, but the key core levels as well. This being only mirrored in projects like Gentoo and LFS which teach nearly the same aspects, but not on the same simple terms as Slackware.

As of recent I've debated one of the upcoming major projects Linux is diving into, and in my opinion honestly, a dive being made into a pool that has not been check for how full it in. I completely disagree with how this project has been handled by certain developers, and distribution maintainers that have exerted their personal wills and the will of a less than scrupulous developer who need not be mentioned, against that of the will of the knowledgeable long time users and administrators.

I respect the grounds that the Slackware leadership and crew has taken a stand on to say "if it is needed it will be added, but if not we will do everything in our power to not use it". However, this may not be the case if this developer who need not be mentioned has his way and forces other projects into his inner circle and malformed guidance as to what Linux should be.

For me, this has forced my hand not only as an end-user, but a systems and network administrator as well to start a search into other variants of UNIX-like systems, such as FreeBSD to find a system that will be end user and admin friendly with that learning curve that allow me to have total control over the system without the need for overburdening tools that automate everything taking away from my experience, teaching me down at the fundamental and core levels also.

So, now I'm having to make a hard choice, stick it out with Linux and Slackware until the possible inevitable comes barring a remote chance of total revolt against this one need not be mentioned project by developers and distribution maintainers alike, or jump ship to FreeBSD and see where the wind and currents take me out into the UNIX ocean that is free from this project that has caused enough turmoil and controversy to last a lifetime.

To me FreeBSD is similar to Slackware and Gentoo in many ways, but in many ways it's not. It's minimal, has everything I need to be a proper administrator of my system and network, great documentation that has eased me into the fold without too much of a hiccup, and allow me to have as much control of my system as I want to have with few things automated unless absolutely necessary. It's taken a day for me, but I've really learned a lot about how FreeBSD works, I've set up a nice and powerful system that meets my needs, and everything works more or less, just not out of the box right away.

Care is taken by the developers very similar to how much care Patrick and crew take towards Slackware to create a stable system that works how it's supposed to work without sending users and admins into a panic after installation because a key package failed to work and caused problems.

I also like the fact that FreeBSD allows more freedom of what software can be used within the system the fact that if you want something, chances are it can be ported in because the BSD License allows for so much more to be allowed than the GPL does. This opens a lot of doors for FreeBSD in my opinion to be an advanced futuristic operating system.

So here's my thing, I want good quality feedback on what I am making as a choice of switching to FreeBSD from Slackware. This included experiences, comparisons, and even complaints about FreeBSD and Linux in general. I really want to know if this is also something others are looking into besides myself and if your reasons are similar to mine also.

Honestly, I think you are just making a house out of a matchbox. How would we know which software you should use? just try different ones and find out for your self. So far I've only understood that you like to get attention, so yes I think you are cool because you tried freeBSD, good for you! I have also tried when I was a kid and it sure kept my head high, other than that I just hated the system, Linux is way ahead whenever you like it or not.

In Linux world one thing is stable - the change. So it's constantly changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but there always been a never ending learning curve, even for those experienced users. Linux is a product of a community, and community is formed out of people who live free and thus makes things by their own hands, therefore they often recreate or invent, or simplify expensive technology which is already there. As a community we can also counterweight worse changes and make them work for the better. If we see a nice feature of windows or mac, or whatever, we usually want to have it also. So if you can't cope with a never ending learning curve, just go for BSD, they most likely try hard to keep things constant, but that which is not growing is dying, so in order not to die even they have to grow and change sometimes.

Might not be what you wanted to read, sorry, just felt you could use some grownup thinking. Cheers!

I'm afraid that wording your question in so general terms will just trigger one more useless big-endian vs little-endian discussion.

At the end of the day choice will be yours, so why not just try both for a sufficient time?

(Duplicate post)

>I do not agree with the direction Linux is being guided down by the upstream developers

Me neither. I do like Linus, and I do like RMS. Love me some PV & crew. Most everyone else are just hangers-on IMO.
So, ReaperX7.... If in fact you are a working sysadmin, you should just learn and love and live whatever OSs are out there running networks. Why be so monogamous?

Now, when Slackware 14 came out, and not only was GConf included but freaking NetworkManager, I actually had a bit of a temper tantrum. Like you, I can be pretty particular about what software is on my machine. And I do agree that most distros are sucking ever harder with each passing year. But keep in mind, that most people who use computers do-not-g-a-f how they work. They just want it to print their coupons, and check their ebays. I have always admired the BSDs, but they just seem so...'stayed'. Part of what makes Linux FUN for me is what I finally have started to learn thanks to Slackware: you don't have to upgrade.

BSD will make you upgrade. With Linux, you can choose your core system components. As a competent system admin, you can choose to stick with known good configurations. You can audit the stack and only run what you want. You can roll your own core and just use that. Run a LinuxLibre kernel. Run the init system of your choice.
[In the voice of Charleston Heston as Moses in "The Ten Commandments"]: ReaperX7........ROLL YOUR OWN DISTRO ALREADY ;-)

I totally agree with STDOUBT, and you seem to be mad at the changes seen in Linux and I do agree with you. But I think what STDOUBT suggested was the best choice rather than staying in Slackware or going for FreeBSD. Just go for it and develop your own DISTRO where you can do what you want and who knows we might be there to support you.

Cheers

For me there are some things the BSDs are better at. There are some things GNU/Linux is better at. And there are some things where Microsoft Windows (and third-party Windows software) is light years ahead. That's where virtualization comes in. Why sweat the small stuff? Why not run the whole lot simultaneously? Pick a host platform you feel comfortable with, one which will do all the audio and video stuff that doesn't run as well in a VM, and then sit your VMs on top. Problem solved. I use a NetBSD Xen dom0, with NetBSD and Slackware PV domUs and Windows HVM domUs. Does a paravirtualized Slackware run more slowly on this setup? Faster, if anything. The only caveat is that you have to trick around to get audio and video working well.

I have come to really loathe a lot of the puerile developments going on in GNU/Linux lately, but Slackware remains a gold standard. NetBSD is also a stunning piece of engineering in my opinion. So why not use both? I trust hardware with virtualization support is cheap where you live?

The danger of switching completely to FreeBSD is that its own shortcomings will begin to frustrate you, and you will have nowhere else to go. My advice: just run the whole lot, and let each VM do what it does best. You will still be able to use Slackware 14.1 in 20 years' time anyway. It will do pretty much all you need to do on a computer. The beauty of the old Unix way to which Slackware and the BSDs adhere is that its methods and values are timeless, and powerful enough to be more than relevant in decades to come. Those who are trying to destroy these old ways will live to regret it, but I no longer lose sleep over what they do. We all know what fate awaits those who take the 30 pieces of silver.

Why does it have to be an either/or thing? I've been managing servers since the mid 90's and if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it is that no one tool fits all jobs. The world is more than just hammers and nails.

For some things Linux might just be what the doctor ordered, for others it might be BSD. A good system administrator subscribes to no religion, he/she use what is best for the job at hand. FreeBSD is a great OS (so are the other BSD), as is Slackware.

There are technical advantages and disadvantages to both. Learn both and have fun while learning. Enjoy the fact that you have the freedom to choose whatever you want. There is no war here: BSD and Linux can happily co-exist and benefit from each other.

If you want to make a switch for purely idealistic reason, then that's a whole different ballgame. I can't give you any advice on that, but take it from an old rat: These "upheavals" come and go, so if you jump ship because of changes in the Linux world, where will you go when the BSD folk decide on doing something you don't like? Windows? OS X?

The biggest drawback to BSD (IMHO) is the inferior hardware support. If you can live with that, then FreeBSD is a mighty fine OS. The biggest advantage to BSD is the awesome manual. I really like that manual. Oh and ZFS of course. :)

So you walk into a mosque in the Muslims Holly Mecca, and ask the parishioners what Prophet you shall follow: Mohammed or Jesus?

You want to be just brave or ... lets say, hmmm... ask for troubles? :scratch:

I've used FreeBSD since 5.x and OpenBSD since 5.0. At the moment I'm only running Slackware. FreeBSD is an elegant OS, but I prefer Slackware. There's nothing wrong with running both Slackware and FreeBSD. It is up to you. If FreeBSD meets your needs then go with it. I am happy over here as a member of the Slackware community. :)

In 1999 I was using Slackware, RedHat, and FreeBSD, and made a deliberate decision to focus on Linux, to simplify my life (and dropped RedHat soon after, as well).

It's been the right decision so far, but I keep a wary eye on Linux's trajectory. If the project goes south, NetBSD is the direction I'll jump. I have a NetBSD machine set up for learning (though I haven't been doing enough with it to learn much, yet), and one of my friends is a NetBSD developer who is happy to answer my questions.

It's good to keep a *BSD in your toolbelt as a hot spare, but imo Linux hasn't actually failed yet (and might not, for years, decades, or ever). Until it does, there's no point in making the jump.

How did you choose FreeBSD over the other BSDs?

The fun thing is: Once you notice, that don't agree with the majority, you end up with your own Linux distribution or *BSD derivate. ;) Look how many there are!

I used FreeBSD eight years from 2000 to 2008 as my main workhorse. In the 4.x days FreeBSD was commercially well supported, had a good development pace and was IMHO well ahead of Linux. Meanwhile they have a hard time keeping up due to sheer man-power issues. Hardware support is not the only issue.

My strategy is to not put all the eggs in one basket, I have always several irons in the fire. So while having fun with FreeBSD, I still kept up with Slackware and Linux developments. Once I ran out of compatible hardware and couldn't run modern Linux binaries anymore, I didn't have a hard time promoting Slackware (back) to my primary base. (Moving to Apple was out of the question). Of course, I still have an outpost in BSD land and keep a close eye on the developments there, especially ZFS and LLVM look interesting.

But the main issue is a complete different one: There is only one FOSS ecosystem, on which both Linux and the BSDs depend on. This formerly cooperative effort is falling apart and has become a competitive environment, in which contenders are not interested in contributing to the big picture, but in excluding minor participants from the game instead. This is an issue, that you can't solve by switching to another operating system kernel. The whole process could be so damaging, that it has the potential destroy the well-working whole, that is greater than the sum of the parts. And if that happens, BSD is screwed too.

FreeBSD/Slackware?
 

Why not have the best of both worlds? I too have grown despondent with the way Linux is going. But I am not willing to give up on Slackware just yet. My laptop has just given up the ghost but the hdd is fine. So I am going to take the opportunity to dual boot Slackware and FreeBSD on my desktop.

I came to Slackware some time ago -- I honestly don't remember precisely when but the distribution media was a set of CD-ROM, not mini-floppies, had to be sometime in the 90's but I don't remember exactly when. I was coming from Solaris which I came to from SVR4 which I came to from System 3 from which I came to from a BSD clone that ran on Motorola 68020's. I was developing and supporting large-scale data bases and needed to work remotely (with 56K dial-up!).

Never did like BSD, just didn't, compared to AT&T SVR4 it was just clumsy (and they really, truly wanted you to use C-Shell which I never could tolerate and still get the shivers when I think about having to use that mess). Oh, SVR4 incorporated Berkeley extensions (pretty nice, in fact) but other than that it (and Solaris to this day) was as intended by Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, and the other developers at Bell Labs.

Slackware was and remains the "most like System V." There's no incorporation of stuff that doesn't make any sense, there's rock solid stability, dependability and reliability (kinda like SVR4 and Solaris). I was bouncing back and forth between Solaris and Slackware, developing on Slackware and doing trivial ports to Solaris of identical code (that would C, C-ISAM and ESQL/C (an Informix C API, now included with PostgreSQL under a slight different name). And when I say trivial, I mean exactly that: change the CFLAGS and LDFLAGS in the Makefile and that was a done deal -- type make, hit the return key and wait a while.

KornShell on Solaris, KornShell on Slackware (still and always as far as I'm concerned). No release early and often, no downward slide to the click-'n'-drool school (well, in fairness, BSD isn't really doing that either).

I'm doing a server build for an non-profit to support large diversified collections of books, papers, art and other interesting things using DSpace to manage the collections -- this will be going for years -- both in terms of recoding the collection information and then making it available to researchers (think Smithsonian writ smaller and no bugs 'n' bones... or airplanes either, darn it). I've specified Slackware simply because I know that I can count on it -- and even if it goes the way of the dinosaurs (get it? bones?) I'll be able to use it for some years due, essentially, to the stability and reliability -- there are folks out in the world running Slackware 10 and 12 not to mention 13.37 and, occasionally some earlier versions. What more could you ask, eh?

The other thing about Slackware is the good sense that is shown in the administrative set up (Slackware pretty much comes up running without a heckuva lot of screwing around with configuration stuff). The default settings more or less just work -- you need to answer a couple of basic questions during installation, but, what the heck. It's easy to custom configure if you want to; it's just as easy to not bother with it -- you get a working box out of the box.

BSD, well, stick VirtualBox on your Slackware system and install it. See if you like it.

Hope this helps some.

Oh! Forgot to mention -- when I'm talking about Solaris, I'm talking about SPARC, not Intel ports, for what that's worth.

I love FreeBSD and OpenBSD and I use them at home along with Slackware. Slackware is still better on the desktop for me overall and in fact, what's great about Slackware, (and using SlackBuilds.org) is how it's almost like getting the best of both worlds. Stability, sane defaults, while giving me complete control over the system and how my third-party software is built. I like that I build and maintain my third-party software (since SBo is like FreeBSD ports) but I don't to rebuild /everything/ like Xorg.

Personally, I like OpenBSD best of free unixes, but I have to admit that now that I have the Arch port of cwm going, I sometimes forget I'm on Slackware on my laptop (which can't yet run OpenBSD). Mind you, this weekend was not one of those times, because cdrecord and/or Linux generic scsi drivers were conspiring to annoy me to no end. In the end I gave up trying to blank and record the 9front iso (my fantasy final destination for free OSes is plan9) on my laptop and did it on my old OpenBSD powermac with cdio which never gives me headaches. That and needing to scout around other than in bash's /etc/profile to find out how colour got enabled in ls left me a little cold. But I'll update firefox to a pretty new version (security update) in seconds tonight and feel love for slackware again.

But yeah, it should be fairly obvious this is something you have to decide by doing (continuing to do?). No one should be able to tell you that going to FreeBSD is a particularly bad idea, since it works fine for lots of people and supports most of the same software as GNU/Linux does. I've tried it myself and it ran everything I found essential. If you were trying for a more dramatic quest for simplicity and cleanliness and going to plan9, people could warn you that you'll have to make some serious adjustments (e.g. no C++ compiler, no complete web browser), but between GNU/Linux and a BSD, the adjustments are relatively trivial in general. Both are large projects with a lot of good work done in them, so maybe it will be a matter of taste. e.g. does having a number less than a hundred come back from ls /etc | wc -l give you the warm and fuzzies or not? Do you like man pages (when they're well written) or would you rather deal in html and info (this is probably completely unfair to the Linux man page maintainers, but I think BSD does a much better job here)? Will you feel you're missing out if you don't get to run wayland when or if it becomes pervasive? Just some examples off the top of my head. BSD's concept of a base system is really nice. I like to play around with stuff with the security that if I fowl things up I can at least expect a basic Unix system to still be there (with OpenBSD, I even get X in base).

One warning about FreeBSD from my limited experience there: You can use binary packages and stay with stable releases and that works pretty well, I think. But it seemed to me like the common or maybe even sanctioned way to install 3rd party packages is the ports system. When I tried that I discovered the way to work out the dependencies to do upgrade builds was to choose from a couple of programs (portmaster, portupgrade, ...?) that try to work out the dependency trees from whatever your starting point is, which I'm guessing is impossible to do perfectly, but it left me very frustrated at times. Had a similar problem with pkgsrc with trying to do use pkg_rolling_replace or whatever it's called. Dealing with this kind of tool is a kind of accidental knowledge I wish I never accumulated. Completely unfair criticism, possibly, since there are other ways of doing things that are more guaranteed to work without headaches, but it's a trap for the unwary IMO. I only realized it recently, but I always thought OpenBSD was infinitely superior here, but in fact its ports system doesn't even attempt what portmaster and friends do, unless I'm mistaken, so it was only superior in not leading me unto temptation or else kept my expectations for effortless source upgrades of 3rd party stuff low. Oh, so now FreeBSD (and DragonFly?) has a new binary package manager called pkgng. Try using that if you can, at least til you get the swing of things. That may keep you from unfairly judging the system based on the labour and the not always perfectly determinate upgrade behaviour involved in dealing with ports upgrades.

I have used computers for more than three decades. In all that time I have not changed my mind that computers remain user hostile rather than user friendly.

There once was a common joke about all of the blinking clocks on VCRs because few people could figure out how to configure the clock. Computers remain much like that. Yes, geeks learn to adapt but not the non techies. Computers are pretty much designed by geeks, used by geeks, yet seldom tested by non geeks.

I too dislike the direction certain upstream maintainers are moving. One thing I have learned, and now grudgingly accept, is in the free software world something is always broken. Always. No exceptions.

Since upstream maintainers are out of my control or influence, and something is always broken in free software, my attitude then is to find the path of least disruption and pain. I can't eliminate the disruptions or pain, only limit. I've tried other distros and they frustrate me. Not the hand-holding but the presumptions used in designing the system. Too restrictive. Too much pain.

Through the years I've shared opinions about how I thought Slackware could be improved. Some of those suggestions succeeded, many did not. Yet I continue using Slackware because Slackware gets in my way the least.

Slackware is a computer operating system and requires elbow grease to customize. I customize Slackware extensively. Slackware is no exception to my belief that computers remain user hostile, but Slackware causes me the least pain. I did not write no pain. I wrote the least pain.

I can't change the direction of upstream maintainers. I gave up thinking free software would one day not be broken somewhere. At least Slackware is designed to stay out of my way.

My crystal ball is always foggy. I don't know what the future holds. I have no idea what is inevitable or even what might seem to be inevitable. All any of us can do is decide what works best for each of us and what provides the least disruption and pain. :)

These port* tools try automatic dependency resolution and package upgrades by automatically rebuilding them from source. And fail. There is a reason why Slackware explicitly refrains from doing such things, despite being criticized all the time for this decision.

Ports and pkgsrc are great tools to build a complete customized package set from scratch using a frozen (and tested) release tree. You can then install this set into a clean BSD base system. Or use pre-built packages. For security patches you are on your own.

Upgrades work best by rebuilding everything, removing the old packages completely (this is impossible on Linux, but the self-contained BSD base system actually survives this) and installing a new set. Then never touch a running system...

I've had only a few pitfalls with FreeBSD in the past but 9.1 seems to have everything I need supported even through 3rd party drivers on my workstation which I now run FreeBSD 9.1 and require OSSv4 for my audio device and the Nvidia proprietary driver for my graphics, but otherwise everything works. I'm actually on the FreeBSD mailing list and many of the developers and users have helped me in the past three years I've been experimenting with FreeBSD get well informed about what does and doesn't work (which mind you for me has all been ironed out hardware-wise), while the software portion is taking it's time slowly but surely and methodically. As far as our servers, they've been chugging away without so much a fart, hiccup, or burp for as long as we've had them (several years now).

I've been told that often the pre-built packages like X.Org and various others tend to work best over the system-built ports collection, but at times, you may want to use both as ports can get upgraded whereas a binary package might not.

As far as creating my own distribution, well I have LFS to thank for that, but to be honest, it's a lot of work and time I simply do not have. I love LFS, don't get me wrong, but it takes a lot of time to get even the base core installed and setup, and even longer for the Beyond LFS sections where everything else comes into play.

As for why I chose FreeBSD? I've worked with just about all the BSDs minus DragonFly, and other variants of UNIX like Solaris and OpenIndiana. To me FreeBSD had what I needed without all the hub-bub and hoop-la of various factors that we all know about regarding the other UNIX and BSD variants. It was simple, it worked, and it was a smoother transition with the best support. Solaris and OpenIndiana were being considered and we've been testing them out with mixed favoring, but FreeBSD won out as to what we were looking for.

As far as Slackware is concerned, Slackware is what brought me to UNIX and kept me using a UNIX-like system for so long, and it taught me well for what I needed, however it's what I mentioned about the upstream goings-on that have me worried for what direction Linux is taking and what is being done with all these toolkits to minimize administration and introduce more and more automation taking away the power of the admin of a system and limiting down what nearly can be done through administration. Don't get me wrong, Slackware is the best and it's the Platinum standard, not just the Gold Standard of what a SysV UNIX-like system should be, but so much effort is being made to isolate Linux from the rest of the UNIX world that eventually I worry about what will become of Linux based operating systems, how they relate to UNIX, and how much of a minimal system that's admin friendly will be left behind even in Slackware. I won't speculate, but I'm fairly certain Pat, Eric, and the other people who contribute to Slackware and maintain it are worried as well with a watchful eye, trying to minimize the impact as best they can, smooth the transitions, and iron out as much of the flaws and wrinkles as possible so that if any changes are done they are next to transparent, but at the rate at what's being done, is being done, that transition is seemingly getting more obvious and less transparent as the upstream meddles more and more.

This decision has been something that's been an ongoing process with me for at least a few years now as to deciding what's best for our interests and sustainability as well as our clients and keeping them happy. With so much being pushed out from the upstream in terms of untested, unstable, and variably unnecessary changes to a system that was perfectly fine to begin with, it makes you wonder who is in charge of GNU/Linux's direction of development and progression as a complete operating system, and really how much change is acceptable to the goals of the whole and sum of it's parts. With BSDs and Solaris systems, it's a complete system built in and of itself by it's developers with a single goal of what the OS should be, not competing idealisms and egos worried about who can change what to further their own personal goals.

But that's my point-of-view of the long-term of why.

Good sysadmin advice no doubt, but for me at home having an interval where I cannot run emacs, except perhaps during the make install phase, is tantamount to a denial of service attack. And as a hobbiest I have no concept of running vs. non-running, nor do I often find very long periods over which I don't want to mess with my machine. Tinkering and using must happen more or less simultaneously. So personally I never go that remove and reinstall route, though I can appreciate the justification. This makes the relatively instantaneous nature of slackware's approach and OpenBSD's pkg_add -ui nearly essential to me. And when pkg_add -ui from prebuilt binaries is not available (as seems to be happening for now with macppc package snapshots where they lag the base snapshots -- I guess they asked for hardware to alleviate this, but perhaps none of us pitched in) some kind of rolling replace port build functionality is a desirable feature.

This thread has sparked my interest again in the BSDs. I am spending a pleasant afternoon setting up a Slackware-current/OpenBSD dual boot system. Open source software is a wonderful thing. :)

I last tried FreeBSD version 6.0 back in 2005. It didn't support the video hardware I had at the time on a system I'd just built, so I replaced it with Slackware, which worked perfectly. But this thread has got me to thinking about giving one of the BSD's another go, more or less just for fun and diversity. I've got a very old 2003 era Win XP system that has been sitting in the closet since I retired it five years ago. It was fully functional when I retired it, and hopefully it still is. I hope all of its hardware will be supported on a BSD by now. It'll have to be a headless system, once I get it set up, as I don't have a spare monitor for it. But that'll just add to the fun, I suppose.

I predict a BSD will run well on it. I think OpenBSD 5.3 or FreeBSD 8.x will run just fine on that unit. I'm running pfSense (modified version of FreeBSD) on an old PIII 667 MHz 300 PL IBM unit that has 512 MB RAM and a 20 GB HD. It is a nice router/firewall. What specs does the box have?

hitest, the old box has a K7 series AMD Athlon 3200+ XP Barton core processor (socket A, aka 462), maxed out at 2 GB of RAM (it originally had 512MB, but I upgraded somewhere along the way), and a 200GB hard drive (seemed really huge at the time). I don't recall the video specs off hand, but it was nothing exotic.

"Possible inevitable" is an oxymoron. Nothing has happened to Slackware. It is still exactly what you have described and what you claim to love about Linux, and there is no reason to believe that it is going to fundamentally change in any way. In fact, given the faith you have expressed in the project and the maintainers, you have every reason to believe that it will not. So I don't actually see the problem.

If you want to use FreeBSD, then use FreeBSD. It isn't really a big decision. Throw it on a spare computer and fiddle with it in your spare time, or dual boot. What's the harm? I've been meaning to do it myself when I have the time (of course I see no sign of that coming!), since everyone in our field probably should, just for the experience.

Or better yet, as STDOUBT said, create your own distro. I think that's a great idea. Maybe you'll get it right (as far as you're concerned anyway), and you will not have to spend any more time debating the controversy of decisions others have made. That's the beauty of Linux and open source: you can do whatever you want!

Good luck to you.

That shows one of the issues of the current ecosystem. The support of video hardware should not be in the scope of FreeBSD, it's actually Xorg which provides the drivers. While predecessor XFree86 put effort into making their distribution compatible with every OS, the Xorg maintainers are only interested in Linux. Funnily enough, with a nVidia GPU you get a commercially supported closed-source driver, which is currently the best option for a FreeBSD desktop. So much for having choices with free and open source software... ;)

Well, XFree86 is dead now, I wonder what will happen to Xorg once Wayland gets adopted by major players...

Video drivers have a kernel and a userspace component. Xorg, in the form of Mesa, only provides the userspace part of the drivers, the kernel part is up to the manufacturers or volunteers. So providing video drivers is very well in the scope of FreeBSD.

Not every video driver has or needs a kernel component.

That unit certainly has enough RAM and disk space to run a BSD. You could try installing Virtualbox on the unit and test run FreeBSD and see how your video card does. Xorg ships with a lot of video drivers.

XFree86 3.x was the last X-Server to run a video card without a kernel component because the X.Org binary that was usually installed or linked against as the main X binary was compiled for a single video card only. You often would see binaries like:

x.3dfx
x.nv
x.ati

and usually the main "x" binary was nothing but a symlink to one of the vendor specific binaries.

...on various Linux boxes due to the way XFree86 3.x was formulated.

XFree86 4.x and X.Org 6.x required a kernel driver to have proper hardware access restrictions via the HAL/DeviceKit layer when the drivers went modular under the DRI specification.

What are those changes? I don't know what you 're talking about.

Not everyone is trying to dumb-down Linux; there are still several distros where configurability/customizability are high priority. I do not think Slackware's KISS philosophy will change anytime soon, nor Gentoo's philosophy, nor LFS.'

I agree with you, I do not like how much influence that developer has in the Linux community and do not see any benefits to his projects. Any efforts to fork the project or separate out essential pieces (in keeping with Unix philosophy) are met with derision by that circle. Besides Slackware and Gentoo, Debian is another holdout vs. these changes and they are much larger. Ubuntu is as holdout but more because of NIH syndrome than anything else. Right now, I think it's still a little premature to assume all major distros will bow to this influence.

Remember too that Linus is still around to fight for his OS and he has been vocal against some of these decisions. Even though Linux is far bigger than Linus these days, he still carries a lot of weight.

Food for thought: Slackware has held out against PAM for years! I don't think you have to leave Linux unless you really want to.

ReaperX7, you talk too much :P Sorry if it comes off as bad, but really, if you spend the time you used on actually doing something instead of writing this rhetoric (like spin off a distro, or what like kinikovak does, spin a blend of Slackware, or, just actually start to use FreeBSD alongside Slackware,) I might be more inclined to be sympathetic to your mountain-out-of-molehill dilemma.

Remember, you can just stick to a specific version; you don't need the latest-and-greatest, and if you do, you'll find ways to make it so.

Sorry to step on toes and burst bubbles but I've said it already that I have no time to create my own distribution of Linux.

The problem is the upstream is sending down what it is going to send down regardless of how we the end users and admins of systems feel about it. Even if I make my own distribution, in eventuality, it won't matter.

In case you haven't been following things you should look into what's being done to cgroups in relation to systemd, as well as how half the entire Linux world feels about systemd and what it has done along with udisks, consolekit, devicekit, etc. that is literally leading Linux down a path away from being Linux or any UNIX-like system and becoming another Windows-like or OSX-like operating system all for the benefit of a user group that doesn't even exist for Linux at all.

If you can't Google all that up on your own without being babyfed the information, then I'm sorry. However, AlienBOB has posted here about it in the last systemd discussion in the last few pages so I suggest you get our your butt and look them up without having a nanny lead you around, which is not me.

If you're an LFS user, in essence you've already created your own distro! You selected the toolchain, package manager, etc. all the way up the stack.

Maybe some history will help: look at what happened with Gnome 3. Many users disliked the new Gnome and as a result both Mate and Cinnamon were born. There are a ton of other options as well: LXDE, KDE, E17, razor-qt, the list goes on and on. If I don't want Nepomuk/Akonadi/Virtuoso dependencies for example, I can look for apps that only have QT or GTK dependencies. There are always choices with Linux.

Flip the flip off, wonderful person. I'm not really that into linux, as simple as that, but i was interested in the discussion, that's why i asked.

Nope, you're making it your problem; you can always choose not to participate in that game of upgrades.

Like people already mentioned, there are stuff in Slackware that isn't even in the mainstream (PAM, Gnome,) and probably will not be there ever (but you never know; people and ideas change, and Linux will change, whether you like it or not.)

What relevant information you're bringing up is muddled by your own (and others') grandstanding of issues instead of actually doing something constructive; I envy you having so much free time writing stuff like this...

Use whatever you like. BTW, did you post the same in the *BSD forum?

daemonforums is another nice place for BSD discussion.

Not sure I'd ask this question there, though. They're nice enough, but seems to me they're less into idle discussion, more into discussing specific technical problems (maybe that's true here too, but with a bigger community things go astray more?). If you do, you'll just get people telling you flat out that BSD is vastly superior to Linux (after all they've made their choice, and it's a human trait the need to, sometimes emphatically, verbally justify our choices to others). So take the most pro-slackware posts in this thread, cross out slackware and insert XXXXBSD. Actually, it may even go beyond that -- the GNU and Linux revulsion in some quarters of the BSD community can be so vehement as to be a little unattractive sometimes, less so than the converse from what I'm seeing here. On the other hand, a link to an interview and a few posts expressing fondness for Slackware there was what drew me to try it. So if anyone's frustrated that a Linux forum is directing someone to a "competitor," well at least that time it balanced out in the other direction.

FreeBSD's advocacy documentation itself has an entry on Why use FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/ There's this (ugly, in an opportunistic sort of way, IMO) statement that bears on some of the Poetering et al. induced flux frustration certain Linux people seem to be expressing lately: "Stability in FreeBSD means much more than that. It means that upgrading the system doesn't require upgrading the user. Configuration interfaces do change over time, but only when there is a good reason. If you learned how to use FreeBSD in 2000, most of your knowledge would still be relevant."

But formal advocacy is it of much more value than discussion forum advocacy? Cross out FreeBSD and put in Slackware in that statement, would a long time Slackware user object saying, "that's nice, but I don't think it quite applies to us?"

Well, I'm glad you asked, my brother. FreeBSD is a great distribution. But it is only one in a long line of distributions. Slackware, on the other hand, is the final one.

One distro forged in the fires of Mount Doom. One distro to rule them all.

@hitest - are you suggesting that Pat is Sauron?!? ;-)

Shhhhhhhhh. :) It is a secret.

I attributed Patrick more towards being Aragon trying to free the Linux users rather than enslave them.

Being a newbie to the Linux world and just having tasted a wonderful assortment of flavors in the last few months, this thread intrigued me to dive in and find out more information about the interest ReaperX7 has expressed. I have not completely left the windows world as 90% of the software we are provided by vendors at my job are windows driven. Having stated that the other 10% is ran on Slackware servers as this was the only way I knew to get a robotics med system to talk to our e Mar system and keep in compliance with each venders needs since our windows setup was getting hosed each time an abundant amount of data was being thrown at it; a few scripts to handle a few needed tasks and "BAM", it has been up and running for over 10 weeks with no flaws. Sorry, just a Proud Papa of this baby.

Correct me if I am wrong but it sounds to me that systemd is taking a step towards a M$ approach to software and hardware layer compatibility where one shoe fits all based on code that will not be able to be changed without changing the entire operating systems nature to handle system start-up in a readable form and in the same nutshell take away the levels of start-up requests that can be changed to suit the needs of the system and its maintainers. I could not have gotten the issue at work fixed if it were not for the current way Linux handles itself. I may be very out of line in my statements not having enough knowledge in this area, but systemd appears to me to be the Vista version of M$, "a low down dirty shame taking away the very essence".

I came to the Linux world because Windows has turned me into a "dummy terminal", and God himself knows how much bloatware M$ has become to accommodate quick development in the name of progress. I would hate to see that same happen in this OS, are we sure M$ isn't behind this along with hardware vendors?

I'm just a newbie learning the ropes and trying to understand, but I feel this change will take away the very essence of the UNIX concept and is the start to end the very idea of FOSS.

There has been a great deal of discussion about this already. You may wish to read through these threads to get a better idea (if you can get through them, that is, since they're both the size of short novels).


http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/slackware-is-systemd-inevitable-4175460337/


http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ystemd-885228/


Somehow and for some reason I myself managed to finish both of them, which was either a great accomplishment or a monumental waste of time. But either way it was no small feat. :)

As you can see from these threads, this is a very cathectic topic in the Linux world.

True, true. Bad joke, I know. :) Slackware itself seems like it should come from the heart of a mountain.
I think of Pat more along the lines of Gandalf the White. An all powerful, kind wizard.

If only more people were thinking along these lines software that could be for the better-ment of all of UNIX as a whole would exist rather than the mess that's being pushed from upstream down to the rest of us. You know the saying "Shit always rolls downhill".

Yes, systemd is a touchy topic for many in the Linux world. Some see it as a way to make Linux easier, but others like myself see it as a nuisance that is trying to hijack the system at the core and make it something it isn't, and even more-so an attempt at seizing control of Linux not just in the GNU OS but at the kernel.

Personally, I don't see how parallelization of service loading is going to ultimately help if they can't get dependencies loaded correctly. Faster boot process it may be, but if the system services are loaded without the proper dependencies, modules, etc. then it's a complete waste as nothing works. Even OpenRC provides parallelization, but even they have said it's experimental and not ready, and they've been tinkering with it longer than systemd has.

The old saying, "If it isn't broke, don't fix it, because you'll end up breaking it" come to mind with all this stuff regarding systemd and what it's ultimate goals are compared to SysVInit. Once systemd become a mainstay, it's either going to be, you'll have to end up using it, or create a whole mess load of patches to isolate it out, if you even can.

However, you got started in GNU/Linux at a key critical time, newbeliever. You're going to get to see what happens when too many cooks try to all stir the soup pot at once.

If only Patrick was standing on the underground bridge with Lennart saying the infamous line, "You shall not pass!"...

He does, I'm sure. In his own soft-spoken way. Which is fine by me.