[weblacky]

Jwhat, FWIW I agree with you on FreeBSD being a pain. I guess for me as a certified RHEL admin I don't like taking my work home with me. Too much pain to deal with. GNU/Linux of 2022 is unrecognizable to a 2010 GNU/Linux, so I don't wanna deal with all of the new trash. No, this isn't even about stuff like systemd, but just the general way things have been set up. Hell, just 10 years ago Gentoo STILL basically required users to compile their own kernels (genkernel was buried in the docs, but now that's changed)

Wow, I feel the same way, but never spoke up because I didn't think anyone else would agree with me on this topic. I was a huge Linux fan starting in 1997 or so and sort of got out of it around 2010 to maybe a little later. And I do find a lot of it unrecognizable today than what I was used to seeing. I agree with the general sentiment where these lots of little things have been added, that have pushed their way into the start up or the core configurations. It does seem like it's gotten more complex from the base should you need to tinker. Though I guess the need to tinker has lessened and so the default works for most things.

[Raion]

I think the biggest issue with GNU/Linux in 2023 air the following:

1. No clear separation between base and installed products. Everything goes into /usr/bin, separations of /bin (nonprivileged commands) and /sbin (privileged commands) it's basically out the window. This ends up creating a mess that package managers, while pretty smart, sometimes end up breaking libraries and entering dependency hell that leads to unintentionally installing kernels of glibc or other major components. FreeBSD is unfortunately moving this way, which is why I left it for new installs.

2. Nobody has agreed on a unified way to manage configuration formats. I'm okay with this being the case for software that is not in base but for software that is, it's kinda unacceptable. This issue is also in the BSDs, to a lesser extent.

3. Security policy that is more focused on burying vulnerable programs under multiple layers rather than just not using vulnerable programs in the first place. I'm not some type of purist to the level that openbsd is, but I do agree with them in the respect that vulnerable software should be patched or removed and not simply dragged along kicking and screaming.

[vishnu]

I think the biggest issue with GNU/Linux in 2023 air the following:

1. No clear separation between base and installed products. Everything goes into /usr/bin, separations of /bin (nonprivileged commands) and /sbin (privileged commands) it's basically out the window. This ends up creating a mess that package managers, while pretty smart, sometimes end up breaking libraries and entering dependency hell that leads to unintentionally installing kernels of glibc or other major components. FreeBSD is unfortunately moving this way, which is why I left it for new installs.

2. Nobody has agreed on a unified way to manage configuration formats. I'm okay with this being the case for software that is not in base but for software that is, it's kinda unacceptable. This issue is also in the BSDs, to a lesser extent.

3. Security policy that is more focused on burying vulnerable programs under multiple layers rather than just not using vulnerable programs in the first place. I'm not some type of purist to the level that openbsd is, but I do agree with them in the respect that vulnerable software should be patched or removed and not simply dragged along kicking and screaming.

That's why I'm running Slackware with MWM as my window manager and a kernel I compiled myself that only has support for my hardware and I do NOT compile any modules, everything goes into the binary. No bloat, no cruft, and Slackware doesn't have systemd (at least up to now).