I run ArchLinux and never look back

Aryeh Friedman aryeh.friedman at gmail.com
Tue Jun 9 14:01:01 UTC 2020


What does this have to do with FreeBSD except for some misconceptions about
it and what it can do?

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 9:29 AM kindu smith <malaizhichun at tom.com> wrote:

> archlinux is the only Unix-like operating system that I run on my
> laptop. The reason I chose archlinux is because
>
> First of all, it is a rolling release, so everything is up-to-date,
> gcc10.1.0, clang10, gnome3.36.2, kernel 5.7.1. So there is nothing to
> stop my love of archlinux.although I don’t know how to keep it up to
> date , But it’s the latest\


Not knowing how to update is a problem and I would consider that a minus.
As to versions FreeBSD (via ports) has gcc 11, llvm/clang 11, gnome 3.28.
So I have no idea why Linux people think we are so "slow" in keeping up
with versions!


> Secondly, it drives all my hardware, including sound card, nvidia
> graphics card, wireless network card, screen brightness and touchpad.
>

My nVidia card works perfectly and always has using the nVidia driver from
ports (worked on the first try with no special configs and contrary to some
people's impression does have full support for wayland), I don't use wifi
for security reasons but never heard any complaint about its support,
screen brightness is not an issue on my desktop so never played with it
same with touchpad but never heard any complaints about them on FreeBSD.



>
> Third, its package manager pacman is very powerful and rock-solid.
> Unlike debian's apt and dpkg, it needs to handle a lot of dependencies,
> and onlyone pacman can handle all.
>

I have had horrible experiences with binary only package installs no matter
what OS so I always do source from ports and frankly not a single Linux
distro I have tried does this well (gentoo tried and failed).


> Fourth, it uses systemd, so it starts quickly. The inspiration for
> systemd is based on maccos launchd, which is even better than it. And
> there is no need to buy Apple's expensive hardware, it is plug-and-
> play, such as usb drive inserted into the notebook can be quickly
> recognized. I don't care if it violates the unix philosophy, because
> who cares.
>

You should care if something does break the Unix philosophy because it
makes it harder to integrate with other tools.   The most powerful part of
Unix is the ability to quickly whip up little scripts and other tool chains
for one off non-trivial tasks.


> Fifth, it is highly customizable, you can install xfce, gnome, kde and
> other desktops, unlike ubuntu, which only contains gnome by default.
> And it can set up its own partition, only in my system is divided
> several partitions/, /boot ,Swap, /home  , and always stable, there is
> no useless partition like ubuntu.
>

Name a desktop that FreeBSD does not support right out ports (no hassles in
setting up either) one advantage of doing it from ports is you can mix and
match for example I use xfce but have the full default app catalog from
both gnome and kde installed and they all work together just fine.

Sixth, it is stable, as stable as debian and freebsd.
>

If it is just as stable as FreeBSD why not just use FreeBSD?


> Seventh, it exists a wiki. Although I don’t understand what it’s
> talking about most of the time, it provides a way to solve problems.
>

If you don't understand the docs this is also an issue. The FreeBSD docs
are in general much easier to follow than Linux ones I have found (they
certainly assume less up front knowledge of areas that don't pertain to the
item being documented).   Also the FreeBSD docs (unlike most Linux ones)
don't have all kinds of arcane examples and unneeded command line options
in the tutorial sections (they are fully documented though whereas many
Linux apps/concepts are not fully documented).



> Eighth, it also has a community-based source code package, AUR. Unlike
> freebsd's concentration, it is more decentralized, but it solves many
> of my problems.
>

The centralization is not a bug, it is a feature!


> Ninth, it is small, and there are not so many useless dependency
> packages installed, that no taking up a lot of disk space.
>

Unless you know the source code requirements well how do you know if they
are useless/unneeded or not?

Of course, I also run freebsd in my oracle VM virtualbox, freebsd is
> also my favorite operating system, its structure is even better, but it
> is not available. The touchpad, nvidia graphics card, and wireless
> network card are not recognized, and the screen cannot adjust the
> brightness. In addition, its startup code feels back to the 90s. I
>

See above on the graphics issue you're just straight out wrong about what
FreeBSD can and can not do.

And why is the start up an issue?   Once it is started why would you give a
damn about the boot environment?


> think archlinux's ok startup is more fascinating. It made me realize
> that I was running a stable unix system, not a mess of code. I also
> don't like gnu's grub, freebsd's btx bootloader seems better.
>

No one uses BTX any more!!!!!   Try the more modern bootloader comes with
11 and 12.

I mean, compared to archlinux, the structure of freebsd seems to be
> better, but it is not as good as archlinux. I will continue to run
> archlinux on my physical machine, and only learn freebsd in the virtual
> machine.
>

Then you have learned FreeBSD wrong since all the issues you raise are
solved ones.
-- 
Aryeh M. Friedman, Lead Developer, http://www.PetiteCloud.org


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