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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Why you should migrate from Linux to BSD....
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| JohnS Guru  Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3649 |
I'm curious to know what things they broke. John |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5705 |
I'm not sure that *linux* (the kernel) breaks things at each release. I *am* sure that some programmers don't keep to the rules and their programs break because of that. :) Even that is usually taken care of if you are using a distro as they tend to test with the new kernel before they update, but you may come up against it if you are rolling your own linux and do a straight kernel swap. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 3493 |
Ubuntu since 08.04 (they actually send you a CD in the mail at that time ... for FREE). I'm not a programmer, but a user. I use most Lubuntu 16.04.06 (the last LXDE version). Very stable, simple. Since it is out of updates, I will have to look for a successor. But not yet... Lubuntu used to be a low resource ubuntu version, but they changed their vision with the change from LXDE to LXQT desktop. And now the bloat is on. Maybe Ubuntu Mate is a better solution now, or Xubuntu. I read about others who tried BSD on desktop, and it did not go smoothly. So I may postpone my intention to test FreeBSD. Let's stay with linux a little longer. Edited 2021-11-25 19:22 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5705 |
I don't think either FreeBSD or OpenBSD is really intended to be a fully general purpose desktop system. Yes, you can do it, but both need quite a bit of work to get to that point. FreeBSD will probably have the most success as OpenBSD disables everything by default IIRC. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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SimpleSafeName Senior Member  Joined: 28/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 286 |
Oh god, early-ish on (I started using Linux at about version 2.0) it was everything. There just wasn't good support for anything new. One of the more memorable hardware upgrades that I made was a video card that displayed everything perfectly, except the picture was upside down. These don't count in my book unless it had been working in the previous version and then ended up getting broken later on. So, early on there was a change in how the modules were loaded (insmod) that had to be ironed out, connecting to a modem was always a crapshoot if ppp was going to work or not. And that was if your modem was even supported (take a look at the Modem-Howto for a better idea of what could go wrong). Or if it was even discovered. Setting up X Windows (X11) each time you did an upgrade was necessary since the new install would wipe out your lovingly hand-crafted version of xorg.conf. And occasionally would lead to the display, keyboard, and/or your mouse not working. The format of the xorg.conf file changed somewhere along the way and for awhile things were interesting. But there was always xvidtune... Then there were the USB issues, a fix for those issues, and then new, improved USB issues. Lilo finally got to where it worked just fine and then was replaced by grub. Printers and CUPS was usually unusable for me. And who could forget missing dependencies. It's 10pm and do you know where your foo.h file is? The guy who wrote your software doesn't... The good news is that Linux got so good that it basically ruined my hobby of troubleshooting other peoples installations. I did see where Linus o f LTT managed to hose his X11. I didn't think that was even possible these days. And all of this took me down memory lane: I frequented Michael Holve's "Linux Coffee Talk" back in the day and the Wayback machine still remembers me. :) https://web.archive.org/web/20050206031333/http://ultra.litpixel.com:82/cgi-bin/lct.pl?read=9743 And Rick was complaining about, surprise, surprise, how a recent upgrade to Linux broke something. LOL! There were more than us three (including some guy named Torvalds who showed up once), but Michael, Rick, and myself were there all of the time answering linux-related questions. Brings back fond memories. :) You'll see a reference to being Slashdotted, remember that? I checked USALUG but it looks like it is just a shell of its former self. I did see some names in the Wayback machine that I remember. That made me smile... :) Which took me to Linuxquestions.org where you can search for "rootboy" and they are still a going concern. My posts in the (as rootboy) can be found here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/search.php?searchid=12069654 So I thank you for your post. :) John |
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| tgerbic Newbie  Joined: 25/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 40 |
I am also a long term Unix/Xenix/linux user. Actually a long term DOS/Windows user as well (plus Apple II, Sun, VAX, MacOS's and CP/M). I have had the opportunity to use all versions of PC DOS and all versions of Windows, plus OS/2. Outside of Unix on mini's and mainframes, I started with Slackware downloaded on 5.25 diskettes (needed a lot of patience to get enough disks to boot linux). Linux was always interesting but not my main OS, which was Windows. I always hoped the day would come when I could make my main or only daily use machine a linux machine. I switched to Fedora just after it was released so I could experiment with the bleeding edge of linux to see all the new things. I believe it was about Fedora 19 that I started to use linux almost exclusively. Around this point it seemed like it was finally a replacement for a Windows desktop. I am writing this message on Fedora 34 using KDE/Plasma and I can say it is really a good primary desktop version. It is very stable, flexible and configurable. I have used other linux versions such as CentOS, Ubuntu, Mint, Kali, and Debian but always come back to Fedora. Downsides to my current linux: 1. Some older windows apps will not run but generally there is a linux replacement. A few of the older dos/windows apps I need to use run under Wine. Those that cannot and don't have a linux equivalent can be run in a VirtualBox OS of one sort or another. 2. Need to change processes used to access my iPhone as Apple keeps changing compatibility to stop access. Same can be said for Windows, outside of the iTunes app. I think Linux is a bloated as you want to make it. I have run some very lightweight versions on old 32-bit single core machines and it still has acceptable speed. You can either install a really light weight linux or install a desktop version and strip out all the apps and processes you don't want to make it light. Though KDE has gotten lighter and faster recently, there are other lighter desktops that are faster, though less configurable. There are currently later versions of Fedora than 34 but I run them on a separate test machine. If you are looking for a more mainstream linux, there are plenty to choose from like Ubuntu, which is a bit more common. What about running other apps that don't run on Linux in any native way? I use VirtualBox under Fedora and so have access to many VMs for testing, playing and running certain apps. This includes: DOS, FreeDOS, W2000, WXP, W8, W10, Android, Ubuntu, Kali, and AntiX. This is what I use and have been happy with this environment for many years now. Sorry for the long post... |
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| SimpleSafeName Senior Member Joined: 28/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 286 |
37 1.44 disks were required for Slackware back in the day. How in the heck I still remember that is beyond me. Slack or Yggdrasil was my first linux install. Minix was my first Unix install. As for other platforms, Commodore, Amiga, Spectrum, BBC, Acorn, MSX, TI, Mattel, and whatever I've forgotten are all well represented here. :) I've had linux as my daily driver and have been quite happy with it. But my needs are small. I still play the Loki linux version of Civ for crying out loud. Currently I'm hanging out in Windows because I like the Windows port of Warzone 2100 better. Yeah, I know, I'm shallow. Yup. That's the entire point of the loadable modules. Or strip them out entirely if you don't need them. And I'm a KDE kind of guy. I was part of the KDE 0.93 documentation project, and as a result of this I have gotten used to seeing my name and some blurb in all sorts of foreign tongues. :) https://www.solmu.org/pub/help/kde/docu-staff.html Same here. :) |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5705 |
I think I've seen you on El Reg too ... :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3649 |
Wow, thanks, very interesting. I didn't realise you meant over so much time! I hope things are much better now. John |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3649 |
Thanks - also very interesting. John |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9049 |
Yes, I do remember in earlier Linux distros, printer support was horrible. That does not seem to be an issue anymore. My Mint machine picked up my network printer just fine during install, and I can print things to it just fine. But I do remember that printer support was very bad years ago. I think that was simply cos the printer manufacturers would NOT do Linux drivers for their printers, only Windoze and MAC ones. I think most printers now support Linux out of the box, and I guess there were a lot of very clever folk who wrote Linux based drivers for lots and lots of printers over time. Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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| SimpleSafeName Senior Member Joined: 28/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 286 |
All this linux talk, and a seismic shift in the junk in my "den" lead to this getting re-discovered. Looks like it's been off since 2007.  |
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| SimpleSafeName Senior Member Joined: 28/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 286 |
Oh yeah, it's been a minute. :) And linux was always good, sometimes you just had to work hard to get it to be that way. And it's gotten so much better (I only had to fix one thing on the last install :) ) that my hobby of helping people out with their linux problems has pretty much dried up. The typical problems these days are usually very specific to a certain program or hardware issues. |
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| SimpleSafeName Senior Member Joined: 28/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 286 |
The first linux handheld, the Agenda. Back from a very long sleep at my house. :) "Developer Edition" for what it's worth.  |
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| danielkos Newbie Joined: 10/07/2021 Location: AustraliaPosts: 25 |
My 2c is the kernel is fine but wrangling library dependencies can be a major headache in certain circumstances. Once you get into Linux dependency hell, the ecosystem can feel like one big ball of pain. Examples: - If you need to deploy a piece of software that requires a particular new version of a library, but the distro maintainers haven't made that available in the repo yet (e.g. because other parts of the distro don't support the new version yet) - If you need to deploy a piece of software that requires an old version of a library dependency (e.g. the library maintainers got self-indulgent and started taking old features out) but the distro maintainers insist on keeping the library version up to date. In theory multiple versions of the library can coexist, but in practice it's more common for the makefile to fail and leave one scratching one's head. Package managers on Linux do a complicated task, because dependency management on Linux is super-fiddly. But it makes the whole system feel like a pandora's box. That's why Ubuntu has found it necessary to move towards Snap packages that can be installed and then uninstalled without unintended consequences where other parts of the distro get messed up. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3649 |
Idiots like that, who do not know one of the very basics of libraries, are a pain (but not common fortunately). I've so far always been able just to have multiple versions even of the libraries made by those kinds of idiots. Not a Linux problem, really, very much specific to the idiots and you get them everywhere, sadly. Please do bug-report any of those you find!! If no-one tells them, they'll go on being idiots. John |
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