[vishnu]

Slackware 15.0 + UEFI - Secure boot plus ((or maybe minus) the Integral from negative infinity to positive infinity of the Constellation Orion) equals just shoot me I'm in Slackware hell. If it wasn't for the last 30 years of the only distro I've ever used (Slackware) I'd jump ship to Ubuntu, which is an African word for "Slackware is too hard for me."

[Shiunbird]

After a very long time with Debian, I started looking for alternatives and now my work laptop is running FreeBSD.
My journey started at typing "ifconfig" and getting a 404 XD

I got annoyed at the constant change and having to relearn the basics every time someone decides that a better syntax is better than whatever that is there for decades.

Now all my servers are on BSD, except a VM that is running my email, but I am already working on the migration, after keepalived pooped on me, getting my mails overwritten every 10 minutes before they had a chance to be backed-up.

I am now exploring some other BSDs just to see what's going on there.

BTW...
With the rumours of Linus retiring, what do you think it will be of Linux?
I think it will have the same fate as our old UNIXes. A bunch of incompatible Linuxes...

[vishnu]

After a very long time with Debian, I started looking for alternatives and now my work laptop is running FreeBSD.
My journey started at typing "ifconfig" and getting a 404 XD

I got annoyed at the constant change and having to relearn the basics every time someone decides that a better syntax is better than whatever that is there for decades.

Now all my servers are on BSD, except a VM that is running my email, but I am already working on the migration, after keepalived pooped on me, getting my mails overwritten every 10 minutes before they had a chance to be backed-up.

I am now exploring some other BSDs just to see what's going on there.

BTW...
With the rumours of Linus retiring, what do you think it will be of Linux?
I think it will have the same fate as our old UNIXes. A bunch of incompatible Linuxes...

Rumors of Linus' retirement are premature, the Linux Foundation is paying him 10 million dollars a year to watch over what the core-maintainers are up to, why would he want to bag out on that when he's only 54 years old.

But when he does bail I think he'll hand it over to 43 year old Lennart Pottering. Yes, that is a bad Linux joke...
With regard to FreeBSD, this is interesting, Netflix is running FreeBSD Current on all their servers. If it's good enough for Netflix, it should be good enough for anyone and anything. Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4TZxj-Dq7s

Easy for him to say; he's been a FreeBSD core committer for decades.

[Shiunbird]

My thing is - I want to learn new and more advanced things. Every time I need to go back and relearn some basic syntax or rewrite stuff... I get mad.

Just got mad a Microsoft's Docker SQL Server image. They don't have their sqlcmd management utility in PATH (no idea why), and they changed it from /opt/mysql-tools/bin to /opt/mysql-tools18/bin... like... WHY??? and I just pulled newer image for same 2022 release.

And Linux is pretty much the same thing. Every time automation breaks or I need hacks like "find" to see where things are supposed to be, I get mad.
So far, I have never had the same problem with freebsd.

Others here will prefer other BSDs, like NetBSD or OpenBSD. But all will agree that Linux is not great...

Without the power that Linus has over Linux, fragmentation will get even worse. Just like with old UNIX. If Pottering takes over, the Windowzification of Linux will be complete.

Very interesting about Drew Gallatin. I didn't know.
The governance model of the BSD distros seems to be way more rational and stable than Linux, and I've been enjoying proper documentation and release notes, and the fact that I can plan migrations and updates without fearing the house will catch fire.

Actually, it is very satisfying to plan big activities and expect that things will go according to plan!

[vishnu]

My thing is - I want to learn new and more advanced things. Every time I need to go back and relearn some basic syntax or rewrite stuff... I get mad.

Just got mad a Microsoft's Docker SQL Server image. They don't have their sqlcmd management utility in PATH (no idea why), and they changed it from /opt/mysql-tools/bin to /opt/mysql-tools18/bin... like... WHY??? and I just pulled newer image for same 2022 release.

And Linux is pretty much the same thing. Every time automation breaks or I need hacks like "find" to see where things are supposed to be, I get mad.
So far, I have never had the same problem with freebsd.

Others here will prefer other BSDs, like NetBSD or OpenBSD. But all will agree that Linux is not great...

Without the power that Linus has over Linux, fragmentation will get even worse. Just like with old UNIX. If Pottering takes over, the Windowzification of Linux will be complete.

Very interesting about Drew Gallatin. I didn't know.
The governance model of the BSD distros seems to be way more rational and stable than Linux, and I've been enjoying proper documentation and release notes, and the fact that I can plan migrations and updates without fearing the house will catch fire.

Actually, it is very satisfying to plan big activities and expect that things will go according to plan!

So wait, you're saying that Windows doesn't have symbolic links? I don't know anything about Windows, but symbolic links have always been the Unix solution to that kind of "can't find the binary" problem. And wasn't Posix supposed to save us from all that incompatibility hell? I don't know any of the specifics, not an IEEE member, and they charge up the wazoo if you want access to their standards. But the Linux mantra has always been "if something's different, blame Posix not us." And Linux kind of puts the lie to the whole "first to market wins the day," if anything compared to the BSDs and commercial Unix, Linux was last to the game. But then the argument has always been that BSD lost the game because of the lawsuits that came out of the original AT&T license that stopped them in their tracks for a couple of years, while Linux was forging ahead (and GNU Mach was stuck where it's always been, which is nowhere,) and commercial Unix was still thinking they had the keys to Fort Knox...

[Shiunbird]

Yea, it's all a mess.

What I am saying is that it has never been good, and Linux will go the same way.

As of now, our old machines plus BSD are the systems that piss me off the least, so I choose them. It's been the criteria.

[vishnu]

Yea, it's all a mess.

What I am saying is that it has never been good, and Linux will go the same way.

As of now, our old machines plus BSD are the systems that piss me off the least, so I choose them. It's been the criteria.

Do you have to run your MySQL on a Windows server? I'm running it on Slackware 14.2 and it works great, never an error in 14 years of 24/7 uptime. I'm running MySQL not MariaDB, though from what I'm led to believe MariaDB is just as good...

[Shiunbird]

Slackware was one of the distros I was considering moving to before I decided to go to BSD.

I've never tried running MySQL on a Windows Server. Why would you do that?
The only use case I can see would be really by big corp policy you are stuck on Windows.

Personally, I've been using MariaDB for a few years, but it was a mindless move. I had to reinstall a machine, MariaDB was the new thing, I installed it and stayed at it.

If it works, then why change?
14 years of 24/7 uptime sounds truly awesome.

[vishnu]

I've never tried running MySQL on a Windows Server.

Personally, I've been using MariaDB for a few years, but it was a mindless move. I had to reinstall a machine, MariaDB was the new thing, I installed it and stayed at it.

If it works, then why change?
14 years of 24/7 uptime sounds truly awesome.

You mentioned Microsoft's Docker SQL so I must have inadvertently assumed that meant the database itself was running on Minisquat as well...

Personally, I've been using MariaDB for a few years, but it was a mindless move. I had to reinstall a machine, MariaDB was the new thing, I installed it and stayed at it.

If it works, then why change?

Oracle changed the licensing scheme for MySQL to a dual public and private license, which led to MariaDB taking over the campus amongst the strict license lawyers in the free software community. I might hop over to it someday if only because it saves me the bother of having to create and install my own Slackware package of MySQL. For the most part, I'm generally agnostic with regard to the topic of software licensing. I've got a crapton of commercial software running on my SGI's without benefit of a valid license, thanks to the good 'ol boys at Hax Force...

[Shiunbird]

Microsoft has an official Docker MSSQL image built on top of Ubuntu.
I don't mind too much paying for software. But nothing like monthly payments or online activation. Or telemetry.

A friend of mine visited a computer museum in Poland a few weeks ago, and I wrote him while he was there to suggest a name change:
"Museum of computer that did what we told them to do"