Thinking of trying out #DragonflyBSD.

What say you, #Fediverse?

#HiveMind #AskFedi #BSD #RunBSD

@RL_Dane I think you're the only person I know that runs BSD. I really should find some bare metal to try it out, never runs well in qemu.

@RL_Dane Go for it!

@RL_Dane

For recent hardware you don't need s3. On my Meteor Lake laptop s2 ( or s2idle) is more than enough on Linux. I suppose it could be easily suspended for 5, maybe even 7 days.

I'm not sure how it is on FreeBSD. Since my hardware is not supported for now.

@RL_Dane what’s BSD?

@RL_Dane i liked it, more of a workstation feel. Still with Linux though, for daily driver.

@RL_Dane i tried it a couple of years ago

@tripplehelix

If you're trying it on a laptop, try #OpenBSD or #NetBSD (if you don't care about full-disk encryption or don't mind setting it up manually). If on a desktop, or if you don't care about S3 suspend, try #FreeBSD.

In my experience, #FreeBSD is the most fully-featured and the most similar to Linux, but doesn't have as good hardware support (particularly for things like acpi suspend) as OpenBSD. NetBSD runs fairly well on some hardware, though.

... 1/2

@hyde

How was it?

@JSkier

Laptop or desktop? :D

S3 suspend is always gonna be a bugbear when trying out alternate OSes. XD

@tripplehelix

... 2/2

#OpenBSD's problem (to me) is the incomplete Unicode support, and the lack of any modern filesystems. Berkeley FFS was great 20 years ago. Not having journaling or any other advanced features seems kinda sketch in 2024.

Other than that, it's a fantastic OS.

I never hear people talking about #DragonflyBSD, and their HAMMER2 filesystem sounds interesting, so I'm thinking of trying it. ;)

@RL_Dane Desktop. Reminded me of the early days with Linux ~ suspend, drivers, and AMD hardware. I don’t think I got too close to fully operational with it 🙂

@RL_Dane non too bad, but I would recommend to you to test it ... We're all different kind of geeks ;)

@RL_Dane Yes, it's definitely lacking some hardware support. I think this is what puts me off every time I try it out.

@JSkier

Yeah, pretty typical BSD desktop experience. 😁

It takes fiddling, but it's fun.

@tripplehelix

It's just like Linux 25 years ago.

You gotta cherry-pick your hardware.

@as400 @RL_Dane How well does Linux work with s2idle? All stable/reliable/works on all hw that supports it?

@pavel
@RL_Dane

I can say that on my Asus Zenbook 14 it works perfectly. As I mentioned it's Intel Meteor Lake. Which actually can be a plus in this case. Thanks to s2idle working so good I actually started using it.
A while ago I had Lenovo Ideapad based on AMD. It was not perfect. It used much more energy when asleep. Also not all devices were waking up correctly.

I'm under the impression that AMD lags behind with Linux support when compared to Intel. It might have changed recently though.

@as400

Interesting. I'm pretty sure that my #PinebookPro only supports s2 (at least, definitely not s3), and it still eats battery while idling.

But as I've cried about so many times, #LinuxOnARM is such a horrible toss-up. :(

If that device wasn't so wonderfully cheap and light, I wouldn't still be using it.

@RL_Dane

You mean it eats battery when asleep, right ?
I've also owned Pinebook Pro. Unfortunately it has multiple hardware design flaws. I got rid of it in the end.

But yes, probably sleep will not work properly on ARM devices unless you use some outdated BSP kernel. Or vendor is interested in committing to mainline.

@as400 @pavel

I think I've heard something like that before, except when it's cherry-picked hardware, like in the case of the steam deck.

@as400 @pavel

P.S., it's been a while since I've seen the AS/400 mentioned anywhere XD

I had some coworkers that worked on that big iron circa 20 years ago, and they rather liked it, especially in the infosec context.

@RL_Dane
@pavel

I worked on a few AS/400 machines. I can tell you one thing. They were IT at its finest.
We had a client (insurance company) and they had their core app written in 1985 for System/38. They were still using in 2015 on an AS/400. So 30 years later.
Imagine this with todays technology :)

@as400 @RL_Dane I have 2.11 bsd in emulator. That's about 1980, iirc, and it still feels like Unix. DOS binaries are still useful today (FreeDos, emulators). 30 years is not that much :-).

@as400

Yes, while sleeping.

That's right, I seem to recall the kernel being a dodgy issue with the PBP.

I'm cheap/broke, so I still love mine, lol. I'd love it more if I could get full-disk encryption on it.

@RL_Dane

You can have encryption as long as PBKDF is set to PBKDF2.
Otherwise it's hit or miss.

@pavel
@RL_Dane

Cool :)