[COFF] Re: (redirected from TUHS) What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 5:52 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> On Thursday,  7 March 2024 at  1:47:26 -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
> > I eventually reverted back to Linux because it was clear that the
> > user community was getting much larger, I was using it
> > professionally at work and there was just a larger range of
> > applications available.  Lately, I find myself getting tired of the
> > bloat and how big and messy and complicated it has all gotten.
> > Thinking of looking for something simpler and was just wondering
> > what do other old timers use for their primary home computing needs?
>
> I'm surprised how few of the responders use BSD.  My machines all
> (currently) run FreeBSD, with the exception of a Microsoft box
> (distress.lemis.com) that I use remotely for photo processing.  I've
> tried Linux (used to work developing Linux kernel code), but I
> couldn't really make friends with it.  It sounds like our reasons are
> similar.
>
> More details:
>
> 1977-1984:  CP/M, 86-DOS
> 1984-1990:  MS-DOS
> 1991-1992:  Inactive UNIX
> 1992-1997:  BSD/386, BSD/OS
> 1997-now:   FreeBSD

I'm a bit surprised by this, as well.

I consider myself very fortunate in that the first computer we had at
home was a Macintosh (the 1985, 512K model; the so-called "Fat Mac").
I say I was fortunate for this because the machine really gave a very
consistent experience compared to the 8-bit micros and the IBM PC that
were common at the time; I didn't realize how important that was until
much later, but once I did, I considered myself very lucky indeed.

The next machine I had was a 486 running DOS. From there, I had a
short stint running COHERENT, the MWC clone of (essentially) 7th
Edition. Then I ran NetBSD for a few months, and then FreeBSD. I
stayed on FreeBSD for a while, until sometime in the 4.9-era when
`periodic(8)` got added. At that point, the growing complexity got to
me. My friend Scott Schwartz had been telling me about Plan 9, and it
was available around that time, so I installed it; that was my primary
environment for a few years until I landed on a Macintosh.

Nowadays, I sit in front of a Mac Studio as my workstation, and I have
a bunch of other machines running a bunch of other stuff around the
house: Plan 9 runs much of the home infrastructure (DNS, DHCP, that
kind of stuff). There's a rinky dink FreeBSD print server running my
ancient laser printer. There's an OpenBSD machine downstairs that runs
backup DNS and consoles. I've got machines running FreeBSD,
OpenBSD-current, and DragonFly, plus a Linux workstation that I run
headless that I use for stuff that requires KVM. There are a couple of
Raspberry Pi's and an x86 Linux machine that all speak AX.25 and are
all connected to various (amateur) radios, an Alpha running VMS, and
emulated VAXen, PDP-11s, mainframes, Multics, Pr1me, CDC, and a few
other weird machines running different legacy OSes.

I never gravitated towards Linux as a desktop machine, really. It has
always felt very fiddly to me. I don't miss FreeBSD on the desktop,
really.

        - Dan C.