[TUHS] What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[TUHS] What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Jeffry R. Abramson]

I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my
primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo
editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so.  Prior to that it was
FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux
when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working
for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from
retired equipment.  I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for
whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by
floppy.

When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I
installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an
NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives.  Under Linux it was
never entirely stable.  I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying
the other SCSI driver.  This was the ncr driver that had been ported
from FreeBSD.  My stability problems went away and I decided to take a
closer look at FreeBSD.  It reminded me of SunOS from the good old pre-
System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school
in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched.

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?

Jeff

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[arnold]

"Jeffry R. Abramson" <jeffryrabramson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thinking of looking for something simpler and was just wondering what
> do other old timers use for their primary home computing needs?

I run Ubuntu Mate.  All the nice features of Ubuntu, plus a more
normal UI and everything just works.  In particular it handles
current hardware (laptops, wifi, etc) fine, as well as knowing about
network printers, generally without problems. I work with a bunch
of terminal windows with Bash and gvim for editing, evince for viewing
PDFs and a web browser.

If you want a more do-it-yourself kind of feel, you might try some
variant of Plan 9; the 9front fork is the most actively developed.
Plan 9 has ben on my to-do list for a few decades now; maybe once
I retire I'll actually get to it. :-) Be forewarned that there's
a learning curve there, Plan 9 is most definitely NOT Unix.

HTH,

Arnold

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Marc Donner]

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For day-to-day (email, web, blah blah) I keep a relatively current MacOS
box.  In addition I keep a ‘toy data center’ - a set of four NUC machines
running Ubuntu on which I keep my various system management projects and
development projects.  They are all headless, so I have a small hdmi
display I plug in when I need to do release upgrades and other tasks that
require a ‘console’.
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>


On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 4:10 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> "Jeffry R. Abramson" <jeffryrabramson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Thinking of looking for something simpler and was just wondering what
> > do other old timers use for their primary home computing needs?
>
> I run Ubuntu Mate.  All the nice features of Ubuntu, plus a more
> normal UI and everything just works.  In particular it handles
> current hardware (laptops, wifi, etc) fine, as well as knowing about
> network printers, generally without problems. I work with a bunch
> of terminal windows with Bash and gvim for editing, evince for viewing
> PDFs and a web browser.
>
> If you want a more do-it-yourself kind of feel, you might try some
> variant of Plan 9; the 9front fork is the most actively developed.
> Plan 9 has ben on my to-do list for a few decades now; maybe once
> I retire I'll actually get to it. :-) Be forewarned that there's
> a learning curve there, Plan 9 is most definitely NOT Unix.
>
> HTH,
>
> Arnold
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Ben Kallus]

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What about Linux is too bloated, in your opinion? Is it the kernel itself,
or the programs that often go with it? If it's the former, OpenBSD may be a
good choice. If it's the latter, I would look into a minimal distribution
(e.g. Alpine, Void, arguably Arch) paired with a tiling window manager
(e.g. Sway, dwm).

-Ben

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Ralph Corderoy]

Is this topic more suitable for the sibling COFF list?
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Jeffry R. Abramson]

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On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
> What about Linux is too bloated, in your opinion? Is it the kernel
> itself, or the programs that often go with it? If it's the former,
> OpenBSD may be a good choice. If it's the latter, I would look into a
> minimal distribution (e.g. Alpine, Void, arguably Arch) paired with a
> tiling window manager (e.g. Sway, dwm).
> 
> -Ben

The bloated part? IMHO I would say systemd, pulseaudio, NetworkManager,
KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon.  Even though Cinnamon is the desktop I use.  My
wife's laptop finally died ie. Windows got so crudded up with stuff
that Outlook couldn't send mail and I just refused to try and fix it.
 I gave her my old PC with Debian and configured Cinnamon to look like
Windows 7.  All she does with it is web and email so all I really had
to do was setup Firefox and Evolution and tell her it was Windows.

As far as the kernel goes, I rebuilt the stock kernel that Debian uses
just for kicks.  It took 25 minutes on a 16-thread system with SSD
storage, source tree plus build output occupies 26G, pretty bloaty.  I
just refreshed most of my infrastructure and in the process switched
from xfs/LVM to ZFS so it may be time to make the switch back to
FreeBSD if I retain enough muscle memory.

Jeff

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 08:15:43PM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
> On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
> > What about Linux is too bloated, in your opinion? Is it the kernel
> > itself, or the programs that often go with it? If it's the former,
> > OpenBSD may be a good choice. If it's the latter, I would look into a
> > minimal distribution (e.g. Alpine, Void, arguably Arch) paired with a
> > tiling window manager (e.g. Sway, dwm).
> > 
> > -Ben
> 
> The bloated part? IMHO I would say systemd, pulseaudio, NetworkManager,
> KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon. ??Even though Cinnamon is the desktop I use. ??My
> wife's laptop finally died ie. Windows got so crudded up with stuff
> that Outlook couldn't send mail and I just refused to try and fix it.
> ??I gave her my old PC with Debian and configured Cinnamon to look like
> Windows 7. ??All she does with it is web and email so all I really had
> to do was setup Firefox and Evolution and tell her it was Windows.
> 
> As far as the kernel goes, I rebuilt the stock kernel that Debian uses
> just for kicks. ??It took 25 minutes on a 16-thread system with SSD
> storage, source tree plus build output occupies 26G, pretty bloaty. ??I
> just refreshed most of my infrastructure and in the process switched
> from xfs/LVM to ZFS so it may be time to make the switch back to
> FreeBSD if I retain enough muscle memory.

So I'm a SunOS guy, got there just after SunOS 4.0, contributed to 4.1,
really contributed to 4.1.1 and 4.1.3.  I loved SunOS.

FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a while
back.  While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I know, I 
walked the code), FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s.  Raise your hand
if you have installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.  That "UI"
for partitioning the disks, so arcane.  The whole install experience
is _awful_.

SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD.  But BSD is so dead
it is not even funny.  Linux is light years ahead.  Here is an example
from more than 20 years ago.  I was installing RedHat Linux and the 
machine I was installing on didn't have a mouse.  The installer was
graphical and it was just easier to tab through the options than go
find a mouse.

I'd love it if BSD had kept up but it has not.  Linux is way better.
Yeah, all the bloat is annoying but we are not running on 64KB PDP-lls.
L1 is that size, L2 and L3 are bigger.  Main memory is many orders of
magnitude bigger, I'm typing this on a 32GB memory laptop.  It's fine.
-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Luther Johnson]

I believe the first Minix C compilers were based on the Amsterdam
Compiler Kit, so that's another early source.

On 03/07/2024 08:42 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 08:15:43PM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
>> On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
>>> What about Linux is too bloated, in your opinion? Is it the kernel
>>> itself, or the programs that often go with it? If it's the former,
>>> OpenBSD may be a good choice. If it's the latter, I would look into a
>>> minimal distribution (e.g. Alpine, Void, arguably Arch) paired with a
>>> tiling window manager (e.g. Sway, dwm).
>>>
>>> -Ben
>> The bloated part? IMHO I would say systemd, pulseaudio, NetworkManager,
>> KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon. ??Even though Cinnamon is the desktop I use. ??My
>> wife's laptop finally died ie. Windows got so crudded up with stuff
>> that Outlook couldn't send mail and I just refused to try and fix it.
>> ??I gave her my old PC with Debian and configured Cinnamon to look like
>> Windows 7. ??All she does with it is web and email so all I really had
>> to do was setup Firefox and Evolution and tell her it was Windows.
>>
>> As far as the kernel goes, I rebuilt the stock kernel that Debian uses
>> just for kicks. ??It took 25 minutes on a 16-thread system with SSD
>> storage, source tree plus build output occupies 26G, pretty bloaty. ??I
>> just refreshed most of my infrastructure and in the process switched
>> from xfs/LVM to ZFS so it may be time to make the switch back to
>> FreeBSD if I retain enough muscle memory.
> So I'm a SunOS guy, got there just after SunOS 4.0, contributed to 4.1,
> really contributed to 4.1.1 and 4.1.3.  I loved SunOS.
>
> FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a while
> back.  While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I know, I
> walked the code), FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s.  Raise your hand
> if you have installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.  That "UI"
> for partitioning the disks, so arcane.  The whole install experience
> is _awful_.
>
> SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD.  But BSD is so dead
> it is not even funny.  Linux is light years ahead.  Here is an example
> from more than 20 years ago.  I was installing RedHat Linux and the
> machine I was installing on didn't have a mouse.  The installer was
> graphical and it was just easier to tab through the options than go
> find a mouse.
>
> I'd love it if BSD had kept up but it has not.  Linux is way better.
> Yeah, all the bloat is annoying but we are not running on 64KB PDP-lls.
> L1 is that size, L2 and L3 are bigger.  Main memory is many orders of
> magnitude bigger, I'm typing this on a 32GB memory laptop.  It's fine.

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Luther Johnson]

Oops, wrong thread, sorry.

On 03/07/2024 08:57 PM, Luther Johnson wrote:
> I believe the first Minix C compilers were based on the Amsterdam
> Compiler Kit, so that's another early source.
>
> On 03/07/2024 08:42 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 08:15:43PM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
>>>> What about Linux is too bloated, in your opinion? Is it the kernel
>>>> itself, or the programs that often go with it? If it's the former,
>>>> OpenBSD may be a good choice. If it's the latter, I would look into a
>>>> minimal distribution (e.g. Alpine, Void, arguably Arch) paired with a
>>>> tiling window manager (e.g. Sway, dwm).
>>>>
>>>> -Ben
>>> The bloated part? IMHO I would say systemd, pulseaudio, NetworkManager,
>>> KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon. ??Even though Cinnamon is the desktop I use. ??My
>>> wife's laptop finally died ie. Windows got so crudded up with stuff
>>> that Outlook couldn't send mail and I just refused to try and fix it.
>>> ??I gave her my old PC with Debian and configured Cinnamon to look like
>>> Windows 7. ??All she does with it is web and email so all I really had
>>> to do was setup Firefox and Evolution and tell her it was Windows.
>>>
>>> As far as the kernel goes, I rebuilt the stock kernel that Debian uses
>>> just for kicks. ??It took 25 minutes on a 16-thread system with SSD
>>> storage, source tree plus build output occupies 26G, pretty bloaty. ??I
>>> just refreshed most of my infrastructure and in the process switched
>>> from xfs/LVM to ZFS so it may be time to make the switch back to
>>> FreeBSD if I retain enough muscle memory.
>> So I'm a SunOS guy, got there just after SunOS 4.0, contributed to 4.1,
>> really contributed to 4.1.1 and 4.1.3.  I loved SunOS.
>>
>> FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a while
>> back.  While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I know, I
>> walked the code), FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s.  Raise your hand
>> if you have installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.  That "UI"
>> for partitioning the disks, so arcane.  The whole install experience
>> is _awful_.
>>
>> SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD.  But BSD is so dead
>> it is not even funny.  Linux is light years ahead.  Here is an example
>> from more than 20 years ago.  I was installing RedHat Linux and the
>> machine I was installing on didn't have a mouse.  The installer was
>> graphical and it was just easier to tab through the options than go
>> find a mouse.
>>
>> I'd love it if BSD had kept up but it has not.  Linux is way better.
>> Yeah, all the bloat is annoying but we are not running on 64KB PDP-lls.
>> L1 is that size, L2 and L3 are bigger.  Main memory is many orders of
>> magnitude bigger, I'm typing this on a 32GB memory laptop.  It's fine.
>

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Dave Horsfall]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2024, Larry McVoy wrote:

> So I'm a SunOS guy, got there just after SunOS 4.0, contributed to 4.1, 
> really contributed to 4.1.1 and 4.1.3.  I loved SunOS.

SunOS 4.1.4: pure bliss...  But we know what happened next :-(

> FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a while 
> back.  While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I know, I walked 
> the code), FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s.  Raise your hand if you have 
> installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.  That "UI" for partitioning the 
> disks, so arcane.  The whole install experience is _awful_.

Well, OK, in approx order :-)

    As a FreeBSD nut, consider yourself asked...

    User since, oh, when BSD/OS got borged, I guess.

    And I've seen worse UIs...  Mind you, that SunOS installer was great!

Now, hands up all those who partially overlapped root with swap etc (on 
any *nix box)...

> SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD.  But BSD is so dead it 
> is not even funny.  Linux is light years ahead.  Here is an example from 
> more than 20 years ago.  I was installing RedHat Linux and the machine I 
> was installing on didn't have a mouse.  The installer was graphical and 
> it was just easier to tab through the options than go find a mouse.

You like that abomination known as "systemd"?  As for mice, I always kept 
a couple in the drawer (serial, RF, etc).

> I'd love it if BSD had kept up but it has not.  Linux is way better. 
> Yeah, all the bloat is annoying but we are not running on 64KB PDP-lls. 
> L1 is that size, L2 and L3 are bigger.  Main memory is many orders of 
> magnitude bigger, I'm typing this on a 32GB memory laptop.  It's fine.

I'm typing this on a Mac 8GB laptop, into my FreeBSD 512MB (yes) server 
(it works; I can't afford anything better on my pension).

Oh, I've also used OpenBSD, but since you practically need permission to 
even fart then I'd only recommend it as a firewall.

It's all abut horses for courses: OpenBSD for a firewall, FreeBSD for its 
amazing ports, NetBSD to run on weird hardware, and a Mac for fun :-)

The only reason that I have a Penguin (if I can just revive it) was to run 
stuff that doesn't seem to exist elsewhere; I haven't missed it...

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Steve Nickolas]

On Fri, 8 Mar 2024, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> You like that abomination known as "systemd"?

Call me weird, but I still think the proper init system for any Linux 
distro should still and always be sysvinit or something else of that ilk.

Too many people creating or maintaining Linux distros don't understand 
what Linux is, or WHY Linux is.

-uso.

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Larry McVoy]

> You like that abomination known as "systemd"?  

No, I intensely dislike it when I have to deal with it.  Which is almost
never.  Not a fan.

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Marc Donner]

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Let me remind you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>


On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 9:42 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> > You like that abomination known as "systemd"?
>
> No, I intensely dislike it when I have to deal with it.  Which is almost
> never.  Not a fan.
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Clem Cole]

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+1
ᐧ

On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 10:01 AM Marc Donner <marc.donner@gmail.com> wrote:

> Let me remind you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI
> =====
> nygeek.net
> mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 9:42 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
>> > You like that abomination known as "systemd"?
>>
>> No, I intensely dislike it when I have to deal with it.  Which is almost
>> never.  Not a fan.
>>
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Larry McVoy]

I'm gonna let this topic go or Warner and I will get into a pissing 
contest that nobody wants to hear.

On Fri, Mar 08, 2024 at 10:36:12AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> +1
> ???
> 
> On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 10:01???AM Marc Donner <marc.donner@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Let me remind you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI
> > =====
> > nygeek.net
> > mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 9:42???AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >
> >> > You like that abomination known as "systemd"?
> >>
> >> No, I intensely dislike it when I have to deal with it.  Which is almost
> >> never.  Not a fan.
> >>
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Warner Losh]

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Nah, I 100% agree about systemd. But systemd is such an easy target...

Warner

On Fri, Mar 8, 2024, 8:42 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> I'm gonna let this topic go or Warner and I will get into a pissing
> contest that nobody wants to hear.
>
> On Fri, Mar 08, 2024 at 10:36:12AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> > +1
> > ???
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 10:01???AM Marc Donner <marc.donner@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Let me remind you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI
> > > =====
> > > nygeek.net
> > > mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 9:42???AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> > You like that abomination known as "systemd"?
> > >>
> > >> No, I intensely dislike it when I have to deal with it.  Which is
> almost
> > >> never.  Not a fan.
> > >>
> > >
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Will Senn]

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Seems like. I think somebody was dissing FreeBSD in this here thread, 
too. Let's go there... or not. Coff, coff...

On 3/8/24 9:45 AM, Warner Losh wrote:
> Nah, I 100% agree about systemd. But systemd is such an easy target...
>
> Warner
>
> On Fri, Mar 8, 2024, 8:42 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
>     I'm gonna let this topic go or Warner and I will get into a pissing
>     contest that nobody wants to hear.
>
>     On Fri, Mar 08, 2024 at 10:36:12AM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
>     > +1
>     > ???
>     >
>     > On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 10:01???AM Marc Donner
>     <marc.donner@gmail.com> wrote:
>     >
>     > > Let me remind you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI
>     > > =====
>     > > nygeek.net <http://nygeek.net>
>     > > mindthegapdialogs.com/home <http://mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
>     <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>
>     > >
>     > >
>     > > On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 9:42???AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
>     > >
>     > >> > You like that abomination known as "systemd"?
>     > >>
>     > >> No, I intensely dislike it when I have to deal with it. 
>     Which is almost
>     > >> never.  Not a fan.
>     > >>
>     > >
>
>     -- 
>     ---
>     Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Warner Losh]

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On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:43 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 08:15:43PM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
> > On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
> > > What about Linux is too bloated, in your opinion? Is it the kernel
> > > itself, or the programs that often go with it? If it's the former,
> > > OpenBSD may be a good choice. If it's the latter, I would look into a
> > > minimal distribution (e.g. Alpine, Void, arguably Arch) paired with a
> > > tiling window manager (e.g. Sway, dwm).
> > >
> > > -Ben
> >
> > The bloated part? IMHO I would say systemd, pulseaudio, NetworkManager,
> > KDE, GNOME, Cinnamon. ??Even though Cinnamon is the desktop I use. ??My
> > wife's laptop finally died ie. Windows got so crudded up with stuff
> > that Outlook couldn't send mail and I just refused to try and fix it.
> > ??I gave her my old PC with Debian and configured Cinnamon to look like
> > Windows 7. ??All she does with it is web and email so all I really had
> > to do was setup Firefox and Evolution and tell her it was Windows.
> >
> > As far as the kernel goes, I rebuilt the stock kernel that Debian uses
> > just for kicks. ??It took 25 minutes on a 16-thread system with SSD
> > storage, source tree plus build output occupies 26G, pretty bloaty. ??I
> > just refreshed most of my infrastructure and in the process switched
> > from xfs/LVM to ZFS so it may be time to make the switch back to
> > FreeBSD if I retain enough muscle memory.
>
> So I'm a SunOS guy, got there just after SunOS 4.0, contributed to 4.1,
> really contributed to 4.1.1 and 4.1.3.  I loved SunOS.
>
> FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a while
> back.  While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I know, I
> walked the code), FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s.  Raise your hand
> if you have installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.  That "UI"
> for partitioning the disks, so arcane.  The whole install experience
> is _awful_.
>

We must be using different installers. The defaults just work.

But so what. Even if it was awful, it's the first 5 minutes of your
experience... People don't use the installer, and with the VM images
there's even less need to day to fixate on it.

And to be fair, it isn't from the 80s. In the 80s, you booted a tape
and got. stuck with whatever partitioning the disk driver had. In the 90s
you used a calculator to figure out the labels to put on the drives
as we started to get a diversity of disks. In the 2000s, everything was
still text based, like FreeBSD's installer, but helped you partition things.
It wasn't until the 2010s that the installers started to become graphical
on a wide-spread basis.

But try installing ZFS root. FreeBSD's installer just does the right thing
setting it up. For Liunx, despite it's "awesome" graphics experience, I
had 6 pages of instructions from the OpenZFS web site to do it. So while
it looks nicer, for sure, there's still some UX issues to overcome.


> SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD.  But BSD is so dead
> it is not even funny.  Linux is light years ahead.  Here is an example
> from more than 20 years ago.  I was installing RedHat Linux and the
> machine I was installing on didn't have a mouse.  The installer was
> graphical and it was just easier to tab through the options than go
> find a mouse.
>

FreeBSD's installer doesn't need a mouse... And Linux installers
have been hit or miss on this issue over the years (mostly a hit,
but not always)...

And despite all the pro-Linux Netcraft propaganda, FreeBSD is
not dying.


> I'd love it if BSD had kept up but it has not.  Linux is way better.
> Yeah, all the bloat is annoying but we are not running on 64KB PDP-lls.
> L1 is that size, L2 and L3 are bigger.  Main memory is many orders of
> magnitude bigger, I'm typing this on a 32GB memory laptop.  It's fine.
>

What's that? I can't hear you over the 800Gbps of traffic we're able
to generate with FreeBSD but not Linux...  In all fairness, Linux does
a better job at moving lots of packets...

My daily driver is MacOS for work. And FreeBSD laptop for personal. There
are problems
with FreeBSD (I'm looking at you wifi), but it works great. The Graphics
issues
have been solved, by and large.

Warner

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[TUHS] FreeBSD kernel not OK? (was: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Thursday,  7 March 2024 at 19:42:59 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 08:15:43PM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
>> On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
>
> FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a
> while back.  While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I
> know, I walked the code)

OK, I'm asking.  I've been there too, and I don't see any obvious and
serious deficiencies.

> FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s.  Raise your hand if you have
> installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.

/me raises.

> That "UI" for partitioning the disks, so arcane.  The whole install
> experience is _awful_.

Agreed, some of the installation tools could do with improvement.  But
how often do you install FreeBSD?  As I have already noted, I've been
using it for 25 years or so, and in the early days I held classes on
installing FreeBSD.  By about 2000 they seemed a little pointless.  In
general, once it's there, it's there.  You seem to be emphasizing the
wrong part of the system.

> SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD.  But BSD is so
> dead it is not even funny.  Linux is light years ahead.  Here is an
> example from more than 20 years ago.  I was installing RedHat Linux
> and the machine I was installing on didn't have a mouse.  The
> installer was graphical and it was just easier to tab through the
> options than go find a mouse.

Again, installation.  How about *using* the system?  And why should
you need a *mouse* to install software?

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
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[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK? (was: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?)

[Will Senn]

+1, installing FreeBSD takes me on average 5 minutes. 5 more to apply updates. With ZFS system restores take less than 5 and getting things configured the way I like them is another hour if it’s not a restore. GUI? KDE and Xfce work... not my faves, but better than Gnome for my taste. My only gripe with it is that I run a huge number of programs regularly and they slowly find their way into the package system. Zoom works, but only in the browser, Outlook works, sort of, rstudio kinda works, dotnet doesn’t work at all... These all work and work well on Linux. If they worked on FreeBSD, I would never need another environment. FreeBSD is sane when it comes to init. System-D is for some other use-case than mine, but I’ll put up with init madness if the next time I download a new dev tool, it just works...

Will

Sent from my iPhone

> On Mar 8, 2024, at 5:18 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Thursday,  7 March 2024 at 19:42:59 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
>>> On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 08:15:43PM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
>> 
>> FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a
>> while back.  While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I
>> know, I walked the code)
> 
> OK, I'm asking.  I've been there too, and I don't see any obvious and
> serious deficiencies.
> 
>> FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s.  Raise your hand if you have
>> installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.
> 
> /me raises.
> 
>> That "UI" for partitioning the disks, so arcane.  The whole install
>> experience is _awful_.
> 
> Agreed, some of the installation tools could do with improvement.  But
> how often do you install FreeBSD?  As I have already noted, I've been
> using it for 25 years or so, and in the early days I held classes on
> installing FreeBSD.  By about 2000 they seemed a little pointless.  In
> general, once it's there, it's there.  You seem to be emphasizing the
> wrong part of the system.
> 
>> SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD.  But BSD is so
>> dead it is not even funny.  Linux is light years ahead.  Here is an
>> example from more than 20 years ago.  I was installing RedHat Linux
>> and the machine I was installing on didn't have a mouse.  The
>> installer was graphical and it was just easier to tab through the
>> options than go find a mouse.
> 
> Again, installation.  How about *using* the system?  And why should
> you need a *mouse* to install software?
> 
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php

[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK? (was: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?)

[John Floren via TUHS]

Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> writes:
[snip]
> restore. GUI? KDE and Xfce work... not my faves, but better than Gnome
> for my taste. My only gripe with it is that I run a huge number of
[snip]

Ok so I've always been confused by how often I see this come
up... don't FreeBSD, and Debian, and Ubuntu, and Redhat, and OpenBSD,
etc. all ship a huge variety of window managers and desktop environments
right there in the package manager? I guess I haven't run Gnome in 15
years but everything else I ever want (fvwm, xfce, stumpwm, twm, KDE) is
always available with a quick install command.

I remember for a long time people would talk about how they were going
to install Xubuntu or Kubuntu or Lubuntu because they didn't like the
Gnome interface on Ubuntu... blow away your whole root partition rather
than run "apt-get install kde"?

john

[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK? (was: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?)

[Michael Huff]

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[reply is below, as top-posting is for godless heathens]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 2:53 PM John Floren via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

>
> Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> writes:
> [snip]
> > restore. GUI? KDE and Xfce work... not my faves, but better than Gnome
> > for my taste. My only gripe with it is that I run a huge number of
> [snip]
>
> Ok so I've always been confused by how often I see this come
> up... don't FreeBSD, and Debian, and Ubuntu, and Redhat, and OpenBSD,
> etc. all ship a huge variety of window managers and desktop environments
> right there in the package manager? I guess I haven't run Gnome in 15
> years but everything else I ever want (fvwm, xfce, stumpwm, twm, KDE) is
> always available with a quick install command.
>
> I remember for a long time people would talk about how they were going
> to install Xubuntu or Kubuntu or Lubuntu because they didn't like the
> Gnome interface on Ubuntu... blow away your whole root partition rather
> than run "apt-get install kde"?
>
> john
>

I thought most desktops (specifically Xfce, GNOME, KDE) required Wayland
and SystemD these days?  Wouldn't that rule out *BSD?

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[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK?

[Alexis]

Michael Huff <mphuff@gmail.com> writes:

> I thought most desktops (specifically Xfce, GNOME, KDE) required
> Wayland and SystemD these days?  Wouldn't that rule out *BSD?

i'm not a user of any of those three myself, but as far as i'm 
aware, none of those three currently require Wayland. But GNOME is 
certainly pushing people towards use of Mutter (the GNOME Wayland 
compositor), while:

> It is not clear yet which Xfce release will target a complete 
> Xfce Wayland transition (or if such a transition will happen at 
> all). Below is a list of larger tasks which would need to be 
> done in some way for such a transition to occur. 
-- https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_roadmap

In terms of Wayland on *BSDs, there's active work being done to 
get the Wayland ecosystem working on OpenBSD:

   "Towards running a Wayland Compositor on OpenBSD"
   -- 
   https://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2023-matthieu-wayland-openbsd.pdf

The author of that talk, Matthieu Herrb, is an X dev:

   https://www.x.org/wiki/MatthieuHerrb/


Alexis.

[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK?

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Sat, Mar 09, 2024 at 11:16:33AM +1100, Alexis wrote:
> Michael Huff <mphuff@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > I thought most desktops (specifically Xfce, GNOME, KDE) required
> > Wayland and SystemD these days?  Wouldn't that rule out *BSD?
> 
> i'm not a user of any of those three myself, but as far as i'm aware, none
> of those three currently require Wayland. But GNOME is certainly pushing
> people towards use of Mutter (the GNOME Wayland compositor), while:

You *can* use Wayland, but all of these Desktop systems work quite
well with X11.  Development of X11 is essentially stopped, but the
hardware interface for 2D graphics is stable, so that's not a problem.

I'm still using X11 because there are some shortcomings still with
Wayland.  For example, support for mouse acceleartion isn't there, and
that's a real issue for me when I'm trying to work while on a
walkstation.

As far as what I'm using, my home desktop system is runing Desktop on
one screen.  My other screen is switches back and forth between using
ChromeOS (so I can connect to Gogle's corp systems when I'm working
from home), and my laptop system, which is a 15" Macbook Air (MBA).

I use the MBA because the Apple Silicon's battery life is amazing.  I
will run Linux in a VM using Parallels, and even running Linux in a
VM, the barry lifetime is much better than, say, using a Dell XPS 13
laptop --- this with a display on the MBA, which is handy as my eyes
have gotten older.  This also allows me to do Linux kernel development
for ARM as well as x86, which is certainly nice since ARM VM's on
hyperscale cloud systems definitely has some appealing
price/performance advantages.

As far as Systemd is concerned, yes, it's kinda awful.  On the other
hand, it enables a certain amount of automation when you hot-plug
devices or insert an SD Card.  This kind of conveience and user
experience is there with a MacOS, and while I *can* run "sudo mount"
when I insert a device, it is nice to be able to just plug in a SSD or
SD card, and have things Just Work(tm).  And, it might not surprise
you that the systemd developers essentially ripped off its design from
MacOS.

So yeah, I find systemd annoying, but at least for me, it rarely gets
in my way, and the sort of thing that makes me annoyed when I'm trying
to how things work on MacOS (which admittedly is relatively rare), is
consistent with the kind of annoyance I've run into with Debian.  So
while I have not been fond of Systemd's design and archiecture, if I
don't look close all that closely of the sausage factory, it's fine,
or at least, no worse than MacOS.

BTW, the integration between MacOS and Linux running under Parallels
is pretty clean.  I can run offlineimap and mutt using MacOS when I'm
reading e-mail, but unfortunately, MacOS's postfix mailer is
incompatible with MIT's authentication infrastructure, and I haven't
been able to make it work.  So when I need to actually reply to
e-mail, or compose e-mails, I run mutt in Parallels VM, and the
Maildir directory in my homedir in MacOS is shared with the Debian
Linux running in the Parallels VMM, and postfix running there works
just *fine*.  I'm sure that I could eventually figure out how to
overwrite the MacOS-provided Postfix with one that is approprately
configured, but then it would get overwritten every time I upgrade
MacOS, and running Postfix under Linux is pretty seamless.  That's one
of the advantages of running MacOS and Linux on the MBA; I get the
best of both worlds.

Cheers,

						- Ted

P.S.  And of course, things like TurboTax and Lightroom only run on
MacOS or Windows --- and while I used to have a secondary laptop with
Windows for those applications, with the MBA, I can use a single
laptop for travelling and for applications not availabe on Linux or *BSD.

[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK?

[Harald Arnesen via TUHS]

Michael Huff [09/03/2024 00.57]:

> I thought most desktops (specifically Xfce, GNOME, KDE) required Wayland 
> and SystemD these days?  Wouldn't that rule out *BSD?

Not true at all. I run Xfce on Devuan Linux, Void Linux and FreeBSD -
all without systemd. The two Linuxes are distributions that deliberately
won't let you use Substance D, as I like to call it.

I haven't Wayland installed either.
-- 
Hilsen Harald

[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK?

[Gregg Levine]

Hello!
I agree with the other fellow. I've run Slackware Linux, their 11.0
release on an older Dell and it did not need that pest. I've also used
KDE on it. And I've gotten Slackware 14.1 and Slackware 14.2 to work
on an older Dell laptop, both apply.
-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8@gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."

On Sat, Mar 9, 2024 at 4:53 AM Harald Arnesen via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> Michael Huff [09/03/2024 00.57]:
>
> > I thought most desktops (specifically Xfce, GNOME, KDE) required Wayland
> > and SystemD these days?  Wouldn't that rule out *BSD?
>
> Not true at all. I run Xfce on Devuan Linux, Void Linux and FreeBSD -
> all without systemd. The two Linuxes are distributions that deliberately
> won't let you use Substance D, as I like to call it.
>
> I haven't Wayland installed either.
> --
> Hilsen Harald
>

[TUHS] Re: FreeBSD kernel not OK? (was: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?)

[segaloco via TUHS]

On Friday, March 8th, 2024 at 3:18 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 7 March 2024 at 19:42:59 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 08:15:43PM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 2024-03-07 at 13:08 +0000, Ben Kallus wrote:
> > 
> > FreeBSD and me got reconnected when Netflix wanted to hire me a
> > while back. While the kernel may be OK (it's not, ask me how I
> > know, I walked the code)
> 
> 
> OK, I'm asking. I've been there too, and I don't see any obvious and
> serious deficiencies.
> 
> > FreeBSD is stuck in the 1980s. Raise your hand if you have
> > installed FreeBSD in the last 20 years.
> 
> 
> /me raises.
> 
> > That "UI" for partitioning the disks, so arcane. The whole install
> > experience is awful.
> 
> 
> Agreed, some of the installation tools could do with improvement. But
> how often do you install FreeBSD? As I have already noted, I've been
> using it for 25 years or so, and in the early days I held classes on
> installing FreeBSD. By about 2000 they seemed a little pointless. In
> general, once it's there, it's there. You seem to be emphasizing the
> wrong part of the system.
> 
> > SunOS was a bug fixed BSD, so I really loved BSD. But BSD is so
> > dead it is not even funny. Linux is light years ahead. Here is an
> > example from more than 20 years ago. I was installing RedHat Linux
> > and the machine I was installing on didn't have a mouse. The
> > installer was graphical and it was just easier to tab through the
> > options than go find a mouse.
> 
> 
> Again, installation. How about using the system? And why should
> you need a mouse to install software?
> 
> Greg
> --
> Sent from my desktop computer.
> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program
> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php

It's been a few years since I installed a Linux distro, but FreeBSD's installation process feels much more succinct, and agreed installation isn't something you'd be doing all the time.  In a production environment, I'd rather have the thing scripted anyway, copy VMs, what have you.

There's also something to be said for "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  Different strokes for different folks, if you're coming to UNIX from a Windows world, the graphical install processes of many Linux distros are probably right up your alley, but if you're a minimalist, it can feel like a bit much.  I'd be much more concerned if I'm installing systems so often by hand that the quality of the installer is the make or break....

- Matt G.

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Brantley Coile]

Primarily Plan 9. Currently using Mac OS X to run drawterm. I removed VGA
from Plan 9 years ago. I'll be adding it back at some point, after
which I'll switch mostly over to a Plan 9 terminal.

But we also run almost everything else for testing.

Brantley

> On Mar 7, 2024, at 1:47 AM, Jeffry R. Abramson <jeffryrabramson@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my
> primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo
> editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so.  Prior to that it was
> FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux
> when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working
> for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from
> retired equipment.  I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for
> whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by
> floppy.
> 
> When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I
> installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an
> NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives.  Under Linux it was
> never entirely stable.  I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying
> the other SCSI driver.  This was the ncr driver that had been ported
> from FreeBSD.  My stability problems went away and I decided to take a
> closer look at FreeBSD.  It reminded me of SunOS from the good old pre-
> System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school
> in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched.
> 
> 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?
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Larry McVoy]

First it was Slackware with ctwm, then I wanted more stuff to work out
of the box and went to xubuntu.  Been there for 20+ years.

On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 01:47:26AM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
> I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my
> primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo
> editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so.  Prior to that it was
> FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux
> when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working
> for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from
> retired equipment.  I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for
> whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by
> floppy.
> 
> When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I
> installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an
> NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives.  Under Linux it was
> never entirely stable.  I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying
> the other SCSI driver.  This was the ncr driver that had been ported
> from FreeBSD.  My stability problems went away and I decided to take a
> closer look at FreeBSD.  It reminded me of SunOS from the good old pre-
> System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school
> in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched.
> 
> 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?
> 
> Jeff
> 

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Michael Usher via TUHS]

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SImple, reliable and useful is the key.

Mobile devices are iphone / ipad.  Fixed workstation is a hackintosh, but I'm thinking of buying an M3 mac mini.  My kids prefer a mix of Ubuntu or Windows.

Home servers are a mixture - proxmox, opnsense, truenas core + scale, xcp-ng for some VMs for study (previously ESXi free tier).  Twenty years ago I was running gentoo with a nightly build.  But now I'm moving from Ubuntu over to Debian 12.  This is also my homelab -- I learn by trying new stuff.

For my ex-father-in-law's business which I manage, I selected more easily supported platforms - Cisco for some routers, switches, phones and Call Manager Express + Unity, Ubiquiti for most of his APs, vmware for VMs (Apache, mySQL, mailcow...), pfsense, truenas core, lots of Ubuntu server and ArcaOS (OS2).

—
Michael Usher
University of California, Santa Cruz
On Mar 7, 2024 at 06:23 -0800, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>, wrote:
> First it was Slackware with ctwm, then I wanted more stuff to work out
> of the box and went to xubuntu. Been there for 20+ years.
>
> On Thu, Mar 07, 2024 at 01:47:26AM -0500, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
> > I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my
> > primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo
> > editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so. Prior to that it was
> > FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux
> > when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working
> > for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from
> > retired equipment. I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for
> > whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by
> > floppy.
> >
> > When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I
> > installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an
> > NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives. Under Linux it was
> > never entirely stable. I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying
> > the other SCSI driver. This was the ncr driver that had been ported
> > from FreeBSD. My stability problems went away and I decided to take a
> > closer look at FreeBSD. It reminded me of SunOS from the good old pre-
> > System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school
> > in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched.
> >
> > 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?
> >
> > Jeff
> >
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy Retired to fishing http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Steve Nickolas]

On Thu, 7 Mar 2024, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:

> I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my
> primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo
> editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so.  Prior to that it was
> FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux
> when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working
> for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from
> retired equipment.  I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for
> whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by
> floppy.

My current daily driver is Debian 11 (because I don't have the room for a 
distro upgrade).  Went back and forth between Debian and Windows since 
about 2005.

I'd thought of trying to do my own rewrite of SVR4/4.2 for kicks, but I 
don't think I'd be able to daily-drive it and I wanted to start with an 
existing kernel - and getting started has proven to be about a pain. 
(I've proposed both Linux, with clang and musl, and NetBSD, with clang and 
its own libc, as the starting points.)

> When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I
> installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an
> NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives.  Under Linux it was
> never entirely stable.  I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying
> the other SCSI driver.  This was the ncr driver that had been ported
> from FreeBSD.  My stability problems went away and I decided to take a
> closer look at FreeBSD.  It reminded me of SunOS from the good old pre-
> System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school
> in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched.

No wonder, really, given the common ancestry.

> 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 think they've all gotten bloaty anymore.

-uso.

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Clem Cole]

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Like Marc Donner, my primary system, UNIX or otherwise, in which I'm typing
this message, is a current late model MacPro (arm/Sonoma) - which I
switched to Apple's UNIX flavor about 20+ years ago and have yet to look
back. That said, I have almost every OS that runs on x86 from different
Linux flavors and BSDs, plus lots of different I/O controllers for
conversion in my basement.   Further, I also have a number of historical
(non-Intel or Arm-based) computers on my different ethernets.   FWIW: I
also have a ton of SCSI equipment that's either on a FreeBSD Box (most
often), or I have a RATOC SCSI to USB2 controller cable that 'just works'
on my Mac and/or any x86 laptop I have around.  It is known to talk to the
disks as well as recently discussed Archive Viper QIC drives. That said,
I've never tried the USB to SCSI cable with a Linux -- only MacOS and
Winders (I never needed to use it with anything else).   Also, I have never
tried that interface with 9-track, which is on the FreeBSD systems SCSI
chain driven by an on-motherboard Adaptec PCI to SCSI. The only real issue
I have had trying to use SCSI peripherals with MacOS is that traditional
BSD <sys/mtio.h> is not included in the last N versions of the Apple
developers tool kit, making a compilation of old tape-based C code a PITA.
Still, if you install the controller and can manage to rebuild -- it all
seems to work fine.

Clem
ᐧ
ᐧ
ᐧ

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Thomas Kellar]

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Hopefully people are not getting tired of this:

Desktop is a 10 year old Dell running Windows 10 with Cygwin for access to
servers
Plus Old Chromebook which, I guess is an Android  OS
Servers are ALL Ubuntu.  (Intel and AMD cores)
Raspbian OS in Raspberry pis. I think that is Debian derived.

As am ex-sysadmin I love command line stuff

Thomas

ᐧ
> ᐧ
> ᐧ
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Marc Rochkind]

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To my way of thinking, the OS itself matters only if you're developing or
supporting the OS, or doing development for that OS. Otherwise, the
overwhelming criteria are what applications are available. I use Adobe
Lightroom and Photoshop for my photography, and those are available only
for MacOS and Windows. Because of very bad experiences with Apple as a
developer of apps for the iPhone, I don't like anything Apple, so I use
Windows for my desktop and laptop, and an Android phone.

I often hear that there are Open Source equivalents for Lightroom and
Photoshop, but the people saying that aren't serious photographers.

If you don't require any particular applications, then, as I said, the OS
doesn't matter, so Linux and FreeBSD  are fine choices. I've long been
impressed with how usable distros like Ubuntu have become over the years.

On rare occasions, I need to run a UNIX/Linux program, and for that I used
to use the MacOS command line back when I used a Mac, and now use Windows
System for Linux, which runs Ubuntu.

(Like everything else posted here, these are my opinions, likely not anyone
else's.)

Marc Rochkind

On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:52 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> Like Marc Donner, my primary system, UNIX or otherwise, in which I'm
> typing this message, is a current late model MacPro (arm/Sonoma) - which I
> switched to Apple's UNIX flavor about 20+ years ago and have yet to look
> back. That said, I have almost every OS that runs on x86 from different
> Linux flavors and BSDs, plus lots of different I/O controllers for
> conversion in my basement.   Further, I also have a number of historical
> (non-Intel or Arm-based) computers on my different ethernets.   FWIW: I
> also have a ton of SCSI equipment that's either on a FreeBSD Box (most
> often), or I have a RATOC SCSI to USB2 controller cable that 'just works'
> on my Mac and/or any x86 laptop I have around.  It is known to talk to the
> disks as well as recently discussed Archive Viper QIC drives. That said,
> I've never tried the USB to SCSI cable with a Linux -- only MacOS and
> Winders (I never needed to use it with anything else).   Also, I have never
> tried that interface with 9-track, which is on the FreeBSD systems SCSI
> chain driven by an on-motherboard Adaptec PCI to SCSI. The only real issue
> I have had trying to use SCSI peripherals with MacOS is that traditional
> BSD <sys/mtio.h> is not included in the last N versions of the Apple
> developers tool kit, making a compilation of old tape-based C code a PITA.
> Still, if you install the controller and can manage to rebuild -- it all
> seems to work fine.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
> ᐧ
> ᐧ
>


-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[ron minnich]

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my user-facing system is OSX on an m2, 96 G DRAM, 4T SSD. I have a
system76, 40G DRAM, 4T NVME running linux for things needing linux. I have
a USB Armory, 512M, running either a small Debian distro or Go on bare
metal with Tamago. I have several systems that run TinyGo on bare metal.

I have a boatload of IoT under development, nowadays, all RISC-V. They run
a cut-down Linux with ONE init process, written in Go, that implements a
version of the Plan 9 cpu command, called sidecore (
github.com/u-root/sidecore, first talk to be presented next month). As a
result, most of the systems I have can run any distro I want, on a
per-command basis, so in most cases the distro I run is called "make your
choice". I can run any distro I want, with $HOME coming from $HOME, from
OSX or Linux, and It Just Works. You Plan 9 folks have some idea what I
mean, although sidecore actually does more.

WIth Go and Rust, distros matter much less. Most C nowadays is not written
in a portable way anyways -- see a bit of the full sad story here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d0yK7g-J6oITgE-B_odadSw3nlBWGbMK7clt_TmXo7c/edit?usp=sharing
-- so I've largely stopped using C at all. That, in turn, affects which
systems I use for interactive work.

So I guess the answer, in my case, is "whatever I need at the moment" --
since my UI is OSX, my build systems are OSX and Ubuntu, and my IoT are, on
a command-by-command basis, "it depends."

cpu (and sidecore) is one of  those Plan 9 commands I could not live
without, and Go made it possible to have it everywhere. It's even got an
IANA number since last year -- 17010.

On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:13 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind@gmail.com> wrote:

> To my way of thinking, the OS itself matters only if you're developing or
> supporting the OS, or doing development for that OS. Otherwise, the
> overwhelming criteria are what applications are available. I use Adobe
> Lightroom and Photoshop for my photography, and those are available only
> for MacOS and Windows. Because of very bad experiences with Apple as a
> developer of apps for the iPhone, I don't like anything Apple, so I use
> Windows for my desktop and laptop, and an Android phone.
>
> I often hear that there are Open Source equivalents for Lightroom and
> Photoshop, but the people saying that aren't serious photographers.
>
> If you don't require any particular applications, then, as I said, the OS
> doesn't matter, so Linux and FreeBSD  are fine choices. I've long been
> impressed with how usable distros like Ubuntu have become over the years.
>
> On rare occasions, I need to run a UNIX/Linux program, and for that I used
> to use the MacOS command line back when I used a Mac, and now use Windows
> System for Linux, which runs Ubuntu.
>
> (Like everything else posted here, these are my opinions, likely not
> anyone else's.)
>
> Marc Rochkind
>
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:52 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>> Like Marc Donner, my primary system, UNIX or otherwise, in which I'm
>> typing this message, is a current late model MacPro (arm/Sonoma) - which I
>> switched to Apple's UNIX flavor about 20+ years ago and have yet to look
>> back. That said, I have almost every OS that runs on x86 from different
>> Linux flavors and BSDs, plus lots of different I/O controllers for
>> conversion in my basement.   Further, I also have a number of historical
>> (non-Intel or Arm-based) computers on my different ethernets.   FWIW: I
>> also have a ton of SCSI equipment that's either on a FreeBSD Box (most
>> often), or I have a RATOC SCSI to USB2 controller cable that 'just works'
>> on my Mac and/or any x86 laptop I have around.  It is known to talk to the
>> disks as well as recently discussed Archive Viper QIC drives. That said,
>> I've never tried the USB to SCSI cable with a Linux -- only MacOS and
>> Winders (I never needed to use it with anything else).   Also, I have never
>> tried that interface with 9-track, which is on the FreeBSD systems SCSI
>> chain driven by an on-motherboard Adaptec PCI to SCSI. The only real issue
>> I have had trying to use SCSI peripherals with MacOS is that traditional
>> BSD <sys/mtio.h> is not included in the last N versions of the Apple
>> developers tool kit, making a compilation of old tape-based C code a PITA.
>> Still, if you install the controller and can manage to rebuild -- it all
>> seems to work fine.
>>
>> Clem
>> ᐧ
>> ᐧ
>> ᐧ
>>
>
>
> --
> *My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Marc Rochkind]

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Minor correction to Thomas (but nothing is too minor for this list ;-) ):

Chromebooks run ChromeOS, undoubtedly based on some form of Linux, as is
Android.

Marc

On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 9:33 AM ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

> my user-facing system is OSX on an m2, 96 G DRAM, 4T SSD. I have a
> system76, 40G DRAM, 4T NVME running linux for things needing linux. I have
> a USB Armory, 512M, running either a small Debian distro or Go on bare
> metal with Tamago. I have several systems that run TinyGo on bare metal.
>
> I have a boatload of IoT under development, nowadays, all RISC-V. They run
> a cut-down Linux with ONE init process, written in Go, that implements a
> version of the Plan 9 cpu command, called sidecore (
> github.com/u-root/sidecore, first talk to be presented next month). As a
> result, most of the systems I have can run any distro I want, on a
> per-command basis, so in most cases the distro I run is called "make your
> choice". I can run any distro I want, with $HOME coming from $HOME, from
> OSX or Linux, and It Just Works. You Plan 9 folks have some idea what I
> mean, although sidecore actually does more.
>
> WIth Go and Rust, distros matter much less. Most C nowadays is not written
> in a portable way anyways -- see a bit of the full sad story here:
> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d0yK7g-J6oITgE-B_odadSw3nlBWGbMK7clt_TmXo7c/edit?usp=sharing
> -- so I've largely stopped using C at all. That, in turn, affects which
> systems I use for interactive work.
>
> So I guess the answer, in my case, is "whatever I need at the moment" --
> since my UI is OSX, my build systems are OSX and Ubuntu, and my IoT are, on
> a command-by-command basis, "it depends."
>
> cpu (and sidecore) is one of  those Plan 9 commands I could not live
> without, and Go made it possible to have it everywhere. It's even got an
> IANA number since last year -- 17010.
>
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:13 AM Marc Rochkind <mrochkind@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> To my way of thinking, the OS itself matters only if you're developing or
>> supporting the OS, or doing development for that OS. Otherwise, the
>> overwhelming criteria are what applications are available. I use Adobe
>> Lightroom and Photoshop for my photography, and those are available only
>> for MacOS and Windows. Because of very bad experiences with Apple as a
>> developer of apps for the iPhone, I don't like anything Apple, so I use
>> Windows for my desktop and laptop, and an Android phone.
>>
>> I often hear that there are Open Source equivalents for Lightroom and
>> Photoshop, but the people saying that aren't serious photographers.
>>
>> If you don't require any particular applications, then, as I said, the OS
>> doesn't matter, so Linux and FreeBSD  are fine choices. I've long been
>> impressed with how usable distros like Ubuntu have become over the years.
>>
>> On rare occasions, I need to run a UNIX/Linux program, and for that I
>> used to use the MacOS command line back when I used a Mac, and now use
>> Windows System for Linux, which runs Ubuntu.
>>
>> (Like everything else posted here, these are my opinions, likely not
>> anyone else's.)
>>
>> Marc Rochkind
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:52 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Like Marc Donner, my primary system, UNIX or otherwise, in which I'm
>>> typing this message, is a current late model MacPro (arm/Sonoma) - which I
>>> switched to Apple's UNIX flavor about 20+ years ago and have yet to look
>>> back. That said, I have almost every OS that runs on x86 from different
>>> Linux flavors and BSDs, plus lots of different I/O controllers for
>>> conversion in my basement.   Further, I also have a number of historical
>>> (non-Intel or Arm-based) computers on my different ethernets.   FWIW: I
>>> also have a ton of SCSI equipment that's either on a FreeBSD Box (most
>>> often), or I have a RATOC SCSI to USB2 controller cable that 'just works'
>>> on my Mac and/or any x86 laptop I have around.  It is known to talk to the
>>> disks as well as recently discussed Archive Viper QIC drives. That said,
>>> I've never tried the USB to SCSI cable with a Linux -- only MacOS and
>>> Winders (I never needed to use it with anything else).   Also, I have never
>>> tried that interface with 9-track, which is on the FreeBSD systems SCSI
>>> chain driven by an on-motherboard Adaptec PCI to SCSI. The only real issue
>>> I have had trying to use SCSI peripherals with MacOS is that traditional
>>> BSD <sys/mtio.h> is not included in the last N versions of the Apple
>>> developers tool kit, making a compilation of old tape-based C code a PITA.
>>> Still, if you install the controller and can manage to rebuild -- it all
>>> seems to work fine.
>>>
>>> Clem
>>> ᐧ
>>> ᐧ
>>> ᐧ
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*
>>
>

-- 
*My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com <mrochkind@gmail.com>*

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Jim Capp]

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Hi Folks, 


I cut my UNIX teeth on Xenix in the early 80's and have been using some flavor of *nix ever since. I'm a CLI guy and we run hundreds of Linux vm hosts and guests at work. I've steered clear of M$oft for nearly my entire career. 


I weaned my wife off of M$oft 20 years ago and just recently moved her from Linux to an iMac. 


When I'm at home, its MacOS. 


$.02 


Jim 







From: "Jeffry R. Abramson" <jeffryrabramson@gmail.com> 
To: tuhs@tuhs.org 
Sent: Thursday, March 7, 2024 1:47:26 AM 
Subject: [TUHS] What do you currently use for your primary OS at home? 

I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my 
primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo 
editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so. Prior to that it was 
FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux 
when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working 
for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from 
retired equipment. I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for 
whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by 
floppy. 

When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I 
installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an 
NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives. Under Linux it was 
never entirely stable. I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying 
the other SCSI driver. This was the ncr driver that had been ported 
from FreeBSD. My stability problems went away and I decided to take a 
closer look at FreeBSD. It reminded me of SunOS from the good old pre- 
System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school 
in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched. 

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? 

Jeff 



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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Dave Horsfall]

Started off with CP/M, then switched to BSD/OS (giving Windoze a miss) 
when I decided that I wanted a Unix box at home.

When WinDriver bought them and shut them down, I switched to FreeBSD 
(which is still my server); I use an old MacBook Pro for web/graphics/etc, 
with multiple SSH windows into the server.

No time for Penguin/OS; I don't like the way that it shoves all 3rd-party 
stuff into /usr/bin etc (those are system directories, but is typical of 
the rank amateurism of penguins), nor the attitude of the users who deny 
the very existence of non-Penguin POSIX systems that were around for 
decades beforehand.

-- Dave

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Adam Thornton]

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Daily driver is MacOS.  Local network services, mostly Linux on amd64.
Retrocomputing, mostly Linux on Raspberry Pi.

On Wed, Mar 6, 2024 at 11:47 PM Jeffry R. Abramson <
jeffryrabramson@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my
> primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo
> editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so.  Prior to that it was
> FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux
> when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working
> for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from
> retired equipment.  I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for
> whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by
> floppy.
>
> When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I
> installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an
> NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives.  Under Linux it was
> never entirely stable.  I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying
> the other SCSI driver.  This was the ncr driver that had been ported
> from FreeBSD.  My stability problems went away and I decided to take a
> closer look at FreeBSD.  It reminded me of SunOS from the good old pre-
> System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school
> in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched.
>
> 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?
>
> Jeff
>
>
>

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Luther Johnson]

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What I use: Debian 6.0.10, Gnome 2.30.2, on VMware Player 3.1.6, on
Windows 7. All on a ThinkPad X220.

I don't so much recommend these specific versions of each of these
tools, it's just that once I got something working and learned the ins
and outs of all the system administration to keep the whole thing
healthy, I wasn't willing to take on learning a bunch of new stuff for
new versions, especially since I didn't particularly like the direction
the look and feel of all the later versions, seemed to be going.

I've flirted with Mate to take the place of Gnome 2, on later Linuxes,
but those Linuxes needed later VMware versions, and so on, so I came
back to what I had working.

My advice for someone just trying to sort out what they want to use, is
to get a configuration, whatever it is, that lets you work most of the
time the way you want (something Unix'y, for me), but then have one
"necessary evil" environment for those things you can't do any other way.

Putting most of your preferred "world" under a virtual machine, running
on a "not-great-but-still-supported-at-the-moment" OS, helps make your
set-up more portable when you change host machines and operating
systems, when your computer hardware wears out, or when you need a new
computer for some other reason.

On 03/07/2024 02:21 PM, Adam Thornton wrote:
> Daily driver is MacOS.  Local network services, mostly Linux on
> amd64.  Retrocomputing, mostly Linux on Raspberry Pi.
>
> On Wed, Mar 6, 2024 at 11:47 PM Jeffry R. Abramson
> <jeffryrabramson@gmail.com <mailto:jeffryrabramson@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I've been using some variant of Linux (currently Debian 12) as my
>     primary OS for daily activities (email, web, programming, photo
>     editing, etc.) for the past twenty years or so.  Prior to that it was
>     FreeBSD for nearly ten years after short stints with Minix and Linux
>     when they first came out. At the time (early/mid 90's), I was working
>     for Bell Labs and had a ready supply of SCSI drives salvaged from
>     retired equipment.  I bought a Seagate ST-01A ISA SCSI controller for
>     whatever 386/486 I owned at the time and installed Slackware floppy by
>     floppy.
>
>     When I upgraded to a Pentium PC for home, Micron P90 I think, I
>     installed a PCI SCSI controller (Tekram DC-390 equipped with an
>     NCR53c8xx chip) to make use of my stash of drives.  Under Linux it was
>     never entirely stable.  I asked on Usenet and someone suggested trying
>     the other SCSI driver.  This was the ncr driver that had been ported
>     from FreeBSD.  My stability problems went away and I decided to take a
>     closer look at FreeBSD.  It reminded me of SunOS from the good old
>     pre-
>     System V era along with the version of Unix I had used in grad school
>     in the late 70's/early 80's so I switched.
>
>     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?
>
>     Jeff
>
>


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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Åke Nordin]

On 2024-03-07 07:47, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote:
> simpler and was just wondering what do other old timers use for their
> primary home computing needs?

Primarily OpenBSD. Some Raspberry Pi still runs their (Debian-based IIRC) Linux.
The people that pay me so I can buy toys make me run Ubuntu LTS. Since I still
need to work, that is what I use the most, but I can't say I'm particularly
delighted by it.

The reason for OpenBSD is primarily that I'm lazy, as it tends to Just Work(tm).
Especially on the thinkpads that I happen to favor. I used to know a few of their
devs, so it was easy for me to begin using it.

-- 
Åke Nordin <ake.nordin@netia.se>, resident Net/Lunix/telecom geek.
Netia Data AB, Stockholm SWEDEN *46#7O466OI99#

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Mike Markowski]

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On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 1:57 AM Jeffry R. Abramson <jeffryrabramson@gmail.com>
wrote:

> ...Thinking of looking for something
> simpler and was just wondering what do other old timers use for their
> primary home computing needs?
>
> Jeff
>

Jeff and all,

We started with FreeBSD in 1992 soon after getting married.  My wife is a
computer scientist (I'm EE) and we loaded 3.5" diskette after diskette and
then she worked on finding a graphics card driver. :-)  In more recent
times we ran gentoo but that was ordeal to keep up to date.  Like a water
cooled VW, tinkering is almost a daily requirement.  In recent years we use
Ubuntu distribution and enjoy it.  My wife likes the ease of maintenance
and as an RF engr I enjoy the ease of acquiring tools, including
compilers.  Thanks, Clem, for pointing me to ifort a year or two ago!
(1968 F-IV RF propagation code revived at https://udel.edu/~mm/itm/ in the
retro computing section.)

I also use Raspberry Pi 3's in PiDP 8/I (https://udel.edu/~mm/pidp8i/) and
11/70.  I wonder how long till a R-Pi is enough for a work station...

Mike Markowski

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[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Will Senn]

Started with MS-DOS 3.10b and some version of CP/M on a DEC Rainbow 100. 
Then more DOS and Windows. A bit of Linux in 1992/1993 (prior to the 1.0 
kernel) - first Unix exposure. Then Windows and Linux (every so now and 
again) until 2005 when I went Mac full tilt. I would have stayed Mac, 
but man they're expensive and I so rarely have enough cash laying around 
to buy replacements. In 2008, I started using FreeBSD for SCM and other 
services and what with ZFS, it would have been nirvana, but the UI... 
When my 2012 MacBook Pro died, I almost cried... but I didn't replace 
it. Instead, I got a 10 year old IBM ThinkCentre m92p on ebay for $75 
w/32GB of RAM and a fast Quad Processor and I ran Linux Mint on it for a 
year and after getting critical mass on things, thought I would make the 
switch to FreeBSD for everything, but that UI... and the fact that this 
program required Linux compatibility, that one wouldn't run, and so 
on... I've recently switched back to Mint and things are just... better. 
I miss boot environments and systemd's a travesty, but, stuff just 
working is pretty cool.

Mint just works - it sooooo reminds me of Mac in that regard - darn near 
every application on the planet will run on it, if it's *nix friendly at 
all (and my one gotta have app - Acrobat Pro X, runs great under wine  - 
as do Minitab 16, Notepad++, Mavis Beacon, etc). I tried MX for a while 
cuz it's a pretty Debian, but Mint's got MX beat for ease of running 
stuff. Cinnamon as delivered on Mint is pretty seamless. Stuff like 
audio video apps work, the music player integrates so that when it's 
playing Cinnamon knows and stuff...

Also, and apropos to the list, I can emulate any machine known to 
mankind, so far as I know. Yesterday I booted my Windows 3.11 instance 
and did some assembly stuff... simh, yup, Mips, yup, Commodore, yup, 
Apple IIe, yup :). Big fan.

Will

[TUHS] Re: What do you currently use for your primary OS at home?

[Stuff Received]

On 2024-03-07 01:47, Jeffry R. Abramson wrote (in part):

> 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?
> 
> Jeff
> 

Unsure whether this is any simpler but, being retired, I have an M1 mini 
on my desk running MacOS and a T2000 downstairs in the spare bedroom 
running Solaris 11.3.

S.