I own a desktop but have been wanting to switch to something more portable. I have been saving up for a laptop and, as such, will soon be installing and reconfiguring an OS from scratch (one of my favorite pastimes). I’m normally an Artix Linux user, but I’ve been becoming increasingly intrigued by BSD.
Arguably both the best and worst thing about Linux is that it’s just a kernel, which means there’s so many ways to do one thing (musl vs glibc, x vs wayland, pipewire vs pulse vs alsa and so on). This is great because it allows the ecosystem to innovate and stay modern and lets people like me kitbash a system that’s perfect for them. However, it also forces developers to build compatibility layers, distribute and manage multiple builds, etc. Generally, it’s just messy. Now, I could just use a “fully-featured” OS like Mint, Fedora, or Ubuntu, but I prefer lighter systems, and I absolutely love custom tailoring a system to fit my needs. I couldn’t tell you why.
From the research I’ve done, BSD seems to “solve” this issue. It’s a full operating system, so there’s a set way to handle things like networking, package management, etc. However, it doesn’t come with a GUI, so I get to rice and configure to my heart’s content. Is this assumption correct? Also, do you have any words of wisdom for a Linux user thinking about transitioning?
P.S. I’ve looked at the section on the website about laptop compatibility, but suggestions from you guys would also be great. I don’t have the most pocket change, so old-ish laptops are fine.
Gruß!
I've only recently started using FreeBSD, however my experience has been positive so far. I also get overwhelmed with all the different options and choices in a typical Linux installation. As a new BSD user, it is kind of nice that there's usually only one way of doing something, or one utility for a task. I mainly use Arch Linux with a minimal desktop environment (i3wm), so I'm not real concerned with fancy desktop environments. On FreeBSD I just use vanilla Gnome; it looks and feels the same as on any Linux distribution.
I've never had any compatibility issues with BSD, though I've really only used it on one laptop so far, and it's a rather common, mainstream model (Dell Latitude E7270). It seems to support graphics drivers for all the major brands though. The most striking thing about FreeBSD for me is the range of hardware that is still actively supported, including ancient machines that really have no use except as a retro hobby. I have a 32-bit PowerPC Mac that I will soon be attempting to run FreeBSD on, just for fun.
The FreeBSD documentation is also exceptional; on-par with Arch's documentation. About the only downside I've encountered is that I need some software for work that has no binary package under FreeBSD, and that building from source would be a big undertaking. I would have to figure out how to build several large projects and then actively maintain them on my own, which I'm not willing to do yet. When I get those to work though, I would seriously consider switching from Arch to FreeBSD.