[TUHS] FreeBSD kernel not OK?

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Sat, Mar 09, 2024 at 11:16:33AM +1100, Alexis wrote:
> Michael Huff <mphuff at 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.