Linux4All

THE world of computing has no shortage of tribal factions, some of them more fanatical than others. Emacs vs vi, Windows vs Linux, which programming language is the One and Only to rule them all, the list of things we will pile up hills of old CDROMs and unread manuals to then die on are endless.

Some people are content to leave these choices to more pragmatic matters of selecting the right tool for the job at hand, and quietly allowing others to do the same.¹ Others, of course, see their choice of language (*cough*)Rust(*cough*) as superior to all others and are baffled why anyone still bothers using any other language. There are many technical reasons why that is absurd regardless of how amazing that language’s strengths are, of course, but that attitude is kind of interesting psychologically. Why are humans driven to be so territorial about things like this?

And we, of course, see this with Linux distributions² as well. Sometimes I’m amazed Linux got as popular as it has with all the in-fighting between the distro camps (or, perhaps, it owes some of that to the competition created there).

But in terms of smugness, it’s hard to beat the legendary Arch Linux tribe and their viral tagline, often injected unnecessarily into conversations, “I use Arch, BTW.”

And I get the appeal of Arch, personally, if not the attitude. I like working closer to the bare metal of the computer, given my history of starting there and working upward to higher-level languages and operating systems as I learned. I like administrating systems and have even written a device driver or two of my own. I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty and don’t need a computing “appliance” or someone else to keep it working for me.

On the other hand, I don’t have the spare time at the moment to have to do that all the time. I’d prefer it to be a hobby, not a daily necessity.

But nonetheless, I took the plunge a couple of years ago to “use Arch BTW.”

Purists may object, saying that I didn’t truly use Arch. I did, briefly, and it was fine, but eventually settled on an Arch derivative called Garuda Linux as my daily driver on my desktop system (while my laptop stayed with Pop_OS! that came factory-installed on it).³

It was fine, I liked the fact that the package manager was called pacman, so creativity points to them for that. Generally, it was Linux, and it worked, and I was happy with it. I could bend it to my will more or less as I needed to.

However, over time, the cracks started to show in ways that got too much in the way for me to want to use it every day.

Arch is a “bleeding-edge” kind of system where people tend to always keep the system patched to the latest versions of every package and every system update. But unfortunately that’s not just a tendency, that’s essentially a requirement. If you go too long without updating, things get unhappy.

And unlike other distros, you can’t easily do selective updates or backrev individual packages and apps. You must upgrade everything on the system every time, always, and often. Which means, quite frequently I’d find that someone had made a change somewhere that I had to accept and now my system was broken until someone fixed it.

And that’s really ok if you’re running a Linux system because you like experimenting with computers and aren’t relying on it to be stable to get real work accomplished. But I was. I had personal stuff to do, and research experiments to run and couldn’t afford random downtime arriving like lightning strikes out of the blue.

So a couple of months ago I decided I just had enough and wiped the whole system to go back to my actual favorite operating system, that has always been my favorite since I discovered it as a teenager (i.e., when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth).

Unix.

Specifically, BSD. Specifically specifically, FreeBSD.

Yeah, there’s a bit of a snarkiness there too, but usually it’s a lot more low-key because it’s a smaller, and I think friendlier, community. The only memorable tag-line I remember being viral over time was an old USENET signature line that went something like, “Linux is for people who hate Windows. BSD is for people who love Unix.” (Again, I have more to say about what it is compared to Linux that’s long enough for its own post but for now it’s not Linux but is similar in that it’s also—like Linux—an open-source operating system based on the older Unix operating system but legally and technically a separate codebase and distinct from it.)

After getting it all set up and having moved my data back on to the system, getting reacquainted with ZFS, and settling in, I’ve been pretty happy with it. “They” say BSD isn’t a great choice for a desktop and is best suited as a server OS. That’s not entirely wrong (and to be fair, the same is said of Linux, but a lot more has been invested in getting Linux working better in that space), but it seems to be good enough for me to meet my needs. And it’s better than I recall it being last time I used it.

Rock-solid and stable, too, which is what I need, while also being an OS that’s not remotely interested in holding my hand with administrating a Unix-like system, which I also like.

And having got that all working with version 14.3 of the system, I see that they just released 15.0. So maybe after Christmas I’ll upgrade it. Maybe. I am in the middle of a metric ton of work on my research so maybe it’ll be Christmas, 2026.

There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence.
—Jeremy S. Anderson
UNIX systems administrator

EVERY year at this time, I observe the tradition of posting a sample of the past year’s events by quoting aline from one post each month. It often surprises me how such a reckless random sampling still manages to capture enough of the flavor of the year that is now coming to a close.

And so, while I still may have a thing or two left to say before closing out the year completely, we’re close enough to post the usual summary for 2025:

• Jan: As is our custom, we rang in the new year by getting together as friends and family to pursue the most noble cause of saving the lives of everyone from the encroachment of unspeakable evil, making the world safe again. You’re all welcome.
• Feb: Adventuring is a dangerous activity by definition. That’s what makes adventure stories exciting to read, and what keeps us on the edge of our seats as we shovel popcorn into our faces as we sit in a theater as our heroes fight monsters on the big screen. There is always the risk that certain doom waits around every corner, and it’s that tension of ever-present danger that keeps the story exciting.
• Apr: Something I have seen come up from time to time over the years before (and even since) games like Dungeons & Dragons have entered the mainstream is the question of whether it is “appropriate” or “good” for a person to get themselves involved in that sort of entertainment. Usually this is asked in connection with a particular demographic or faith tradition, such as, “Should a Christian allow their kids to play D&D?”
• Oct: Today I was doing a crossword puzzle during a few precious minutes seconds of spare time when I came across this abomination: “CB Enthusiast.”
• Nov: November. Already? November. It was just November a little bit ago…. Trouble is, there’s so much going on … I’m deep in the middle of work toward a deadline looming for my degree, so I can’t guarantee a post a day here, or that they will all be any kind of pithy or deep thought-provoking ideas but I’ll try to post something and maybe with luck a few bits of humor or interest will show up, purely by accident.
• Dec: In hindsight, I was probably lucky I made it three-quarters of the way through November managing to keep up posting something considering the workload I’m juggling. I had to give a very high priority to my research for school and in the end that just had to win out.

I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.
—Sophocles
Œdipus Rex

IN hindsight, I was probably lucky I made it three-quarters of the way through November managing to keep up posting something considering the workload I’m juggling. I had to give a very high priority to my research for school and in the end that just had to win out. C’est la vie. But, abbreviated though it was, It still provided a few brief moments here and there to take a break from that work to jot down a few thoughts and read those of a few friends who were also doing NaBloPoMo.

I did start the Orion questionnaire, so I’ll go ahead and finish that at least, and will try to keep up some kind of trickle of entries as I can, but I’m still deep in the research work, so we’ll see….

Happy belated Thanksgiving and happy upcoming holidays to everyone.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray, and leave us only grief and pain for promised joy.
—John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men