Despite how this may feel, this post really is about Linux.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about trying to daily drive … something else. OpenBSD. RedoxOS. 9front, Plan9. Heck, MINIX3. Some of it is that I’ve always wanted to try living on a micro-kernel, as I strongly agree with the design principles; but more recently a lot of it is because of what’s going on in both user space and the Linux kernel. I can escape from systemd by running Artix or Void or a dozen other anti-systemd distributions; Wayland is getting harder to avoid and some people no longer have a choice despite Wayland still trailing X in accessibility. But that’s still fine for me since my preferred window manager doesn’t run on Wayland at all, and there are no efforts to port it. Most alarming is what feels like a slippery slope around AI in the Linux kernel. No amount of distribution dodging is going to avoid that.
So I spend more and more time looking at alternatives and evaluating if I really can daily drive something other than Linux. Today I realized that I’ve trapped myself, and that trap is because of games.
I’m not a huge gamer, but I like to occasionally play; and recently, Linux has been really really great for games, even beating Windows on its home turf. I played entirely through Borderlands 4 on Linux – a game which is demanding of hardware, by any measure – on what’s basically a mobile AMD CPU/GPU and it crashed all of twice the entire game. I waste a few hours every month on Factorio. I’ve got stuff bookmarked in my Steam library that I know run well on Linux; we have resources like the ProtonDB. Lately, this has been my big blocker, and that realization I mentioned was in the form of realizing that I’m using the exact same excuse Windows users used to use to avoid switching to Linux. Because they didn’t want to lose access to games.
Something that’s informing my hesitation is that I have a Linux phone, too. It’s got an arm64 CPU, and is running some mobil-ized fork of Debian, and so much software isn’t available for it. So. Much. Either there aren’t packages for the OS and they’re not in Flathub; or they are in Flathub but they’re not adaptive and so are effectively useless on a mobile device; or they’re in Flathub but aren’t available to arm64; or they’re in Flathub but just don’t run because 30% of Flatpaks in Flathub are broken and don’t run – at least, they don’t run on my phone, because they don’t like whatever’s providing GL via Wayland. What this experience has done is made me pessemistic about jumping platforms: if I lose access to half the software I use just by switching CPU architectures, how bad will it be if I up and out change kernels? Pretty bad, I’m expecting; I’m not going to be playing any AAA games, that’s for sure. Which is why – even though Linus himself is slop-coding patches into the kernel – I feel trapped.
It’s incredible that Linux has come so far on the desktop that the availability of games is a blocking factor to migrating off of it – isn’t it? C’mon old timers: we’ve come so very far, baby, and for most of it I never imagined we’d be here. We’ve already taken over the world, via phones, via servers, via infrastructure, via all that FOSS that corporations are furtively using illegally by not following the LICENSEs of the libraries upon which their platforms are built. We’ve won, although desktop users only dimly, if at all, comprehend it; we give ourselves handicaps to ensure we remain the outsider underdog, by using increasingly more constrained sub-markets as our penetration measure.
Maybe it’s inevitable: popularity increases capability which begets stickiness. I like being able to just fire up Factorio, not having to dual boot, or faff around with virtual machines or with maintaining two ecosystems. Heck, I don’t even have to run Steam – there’s a Factorio: Space Age package in AUR. I just launch it from the command line. I’m going to lose all that by going to RedoxOS. Sure, I’ll gain the confidence that the kernel isn’t being written by an RNG, but what am I willing to give up? Games?
In a way, Linux has achieved Windows-ness. It’s sticky. People have to stay, unless they’re willing to accept the austerity measures of a younger (or at least far less popular) OS. The excuses Windows users made, now Linux users are making. I want to move to a better OS… bUt WhAt AbOuT mUh GaMeS!!!
I genuinely don’t understand the hate SystemD gets and especially not Wayland. SystemD is fantastic for sysops and while I’ve always liked it, I’ve really started to like it since moving to podman from docker. I get the concerns for how much it handles but Linux and SystemD are still both OSS so if something happens, someone will fork it or someone will make an alternative
For Wayland, just why? I’ve used Linux for two decades and Wayland is just so much better than X11. X11 is an ancient codebase with decades of tech debt and half realised features and it shows. Trying to get monitor independent fractional scaling on X11 was just impossible
The hate for both just screams “its popular so I don’t like it” to me
Still got a ways to come, but you should check out Haiku. It’s a community developed spiritual successor to BeOS. I will admit that not everything will run on there, and the hardware support isn’t the most wide ranging (but gets all of its drivers from OpenBSD and FreeBSD), but it’s easy to use, runs and installs extremely quickly, and all the developers are super passionate about it. I think it can run Minecraft, not sure about other games and it recently got Firefox too
I almost took a job with BeOS once, before they went under. It didn’t used to have a tiling option for the window manager – does it now? I’m not much of a mouse user these days, unless it’s in a program that needs one like Gimp, or a game.
I’m pretty thrilled with the Haiku project and that they’re staying with it. It was a neat OS.
Sort of has window management. You can stack windows together to create something akin to a window with multiple tabs, but they don’t need to be the same app. You can also “fuse” the windows together along a border so they’ll always be next to each other. A good amount of this is accessible through keyboard shortcuts so it makes managing windows easier when using a trackpad
Sounds as if they’ve made a lot of QoL improvements over the years. Are you daily driving it? Last time I booted into it was years ago. I read they’ve gotten rid of the DB filesystem and went with a more common inode-like system. It’s kind of sad that didn’t pan out.
I’m not daily driving it right now just because none of the laptops I have have wi-fi drivers available for them. I do have it installed on one of them though and I take it out and use it every now and then. If my hardware worked with it, I think it’s daily driver-able at this point to be honest. Not tons of software, but a lot more than you’d think.
And yeah the went to an inode-like system for the BFS structure, I think just because it makes porting software a bit easier to do
So, you built your own walled garden. Congrats.
I’m guessing at some point you will disagree with decisions made in BSD. Then what?
Yeah OP, how dare you having convictions and acting according to them.
I’m not going to apologize for having standards and morals.
Yah, if BSD starts funneling donations to Omarchy, or they decide to accept cryptographic PRs from the NSA, or they start bundling crypto-mining code in the kernel, or if they start implementing parts of the kernel in Javascript, then I’ll have to move on again.
Despite your comment, I would be surprised if you didn’t have your own boundaries, your own lines which you would not cross.
Despite your comment, I would be surprised if you didn’t have your own boundaries, your own lines which you would not cross.
Of course I do. And when provided good arguments, I redraw my boundaries. Like any reasonable being. Right? Am I happy with all choices made for me by upstream projects?
No.
But at some level they make sense.
If I want roses, I’ll have to take the thorns with it, because having roses makes me happy. Avoiding them (because I hate thorns) makes me sad.
And, probably, if Linux were all there was besides Windows and OSX I’d just be raging against the wind. My whole and only original point was that there are alternatives, and advocates thereof who are in a very similar position Linux users were 15 years ago: a minority of users who, for various reasons, have chosen to not use the 800lb gorilla. And some Linux users are now in the position Windows users were back then, where they feel they can’t switch without giving up too much.
If thorns are a dealbreaker, there is no shortage of flowers without them. Indluding rose varieties.
I would be surprised if you didn’t have your own boundaries
Of course I do. And when provided good arguments, I redraw my boundaries.
This is the difference between policies and religion: one of them is open to debate.
(My take is simple, but similar: today I accept the “caveat venditor” policy, and I watch it like anything else, like we do)
I don’t think you’re taking a position, so this isn’t about you; it does remind me that frequently the pro-AI folks often characterize the anti-AI folks as being irrational about their positions. This, despite the fact that
every single
published study
shows that
AI
makes
developers
worse.Worse code. Degraded skills. More security defects. I haven’t seen a study yet that shows using LLMs make developers better. They think they’re faster, but it’s an illusion. I want to see the studies demonstrating vibe coding produces better code. Not more code; more reliable code. More bad code isn’t “better”. Even a single study would be encouraging. The people skeptical about AI-generated code have far more data behind them, and are the ones being rational; the pro-AI team are the ones with religious conviction and no evidence.
As for Linus, he’s not a Christ figure to be worshiped, and he’s not infallible. If you had a quant uncle who was smart, made good money, and was a nice guy, you wouldn’t say, “he’s been day drinking a lot lately, but I’m sure it’s OK; he’s a smart guy.”
Again, I’m not implying that’s what you meant; it just reminded me of discussions I’ve seen.
It’s funny cause i was having similar thoughts recently, and pretty much came to the same conclusion, except for me it’s not just gaming. I’m using Guix now and have used NixOS in the past, and i really came to love declaring my entire system through a configuration file, i just love how organized it feels and being able to easily reinstall a very customized system. As far as i’m aware such a thing doesn’t really exist on BSD. I think i read about the Nix package manager having some experimental support for FreeBSD, but it’s not the same as declaring the whole system, so i would have to give that up. It probably wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, since i also really love Void and its simplicity, so BSD probably wouldn’t be too drastic of a move, but then there’s the gaming aspect, and also, i’m not sure how great hardware support is. I’m not sure about NetBSD, but if i understand correctly, both FreeBSD and OpenBSD port their amdgpu drivers over from Linux, so up until pretty recent AMD cards should be supported depending on the release. AMD processors should also be good to go, so i’m guessing it comes down to wifi as a potential blocker maybe.
Something else i’ve been thinking about is: does it really matter at the end of the day? Because code submitted to the kernel is still held to the same standard whether it was created with the help of an LLM or not. Not only that, but on the BSD side of things, even when they are explicitly anti-AI, if someone submits code that was made with the help of an LLM, and the maintainers are not aware of it, but merge it because the quality of the code is good, wouldn’t it put them in the exact same situation as Linux? The only difference at that point would be that one of them is openly saying they accept it, and the other does not, but in reality basically the same thing happens either way. So i feel like at that point i would only be switching for an ideological difference that can’t really hold up practically, so what’s the point?
If you’re using Guix… doesn’t Guix have a version that uses Hurd? It’s not BSD, but it’s also not Linux. Hurd is one option I’m looking at.
does it really matter at the end of the day?
Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe not. I guess it’s a question of whether my trust in the core Linux maintainers’ development skill translates to trust in their ability to use AI well. There’s pretty good evidence of Dunning-Kruger-like effect where developers over-estimate how good LLM-generated code is, and whether it makes them more productive; is Linus immune to that? I guess I don’t want to get caught with my pants down, and that means not having to scramble if the front falls off the boat.
Yeah they do support Hurd! Though i think hardware support is much worse there than it is on BSD and also still marked as experimental. I’m thinking of trying it out in a vm at some point. Regarding the LLM stuff i feel the same way, and even if i’m not planning to switch away anytime soon, i am still looking at BSD content out of curiousity and to also familiarize myself with it if i ever feel like Linux gets to a state where i have to jump ship.
This actually reminds me though. A while back i read an article about how Debian used to have a variant of their distro that used the GNU coreutils combined with the FreeBSD kernel. They don’t support it anymore, but i’m curious if we might see these types of distros pop up again now that more and more people have concerns about the Linux kernel. I don’t know how hard it is to combine those two, but it would be awesome if you could run the FreeBSD kernel with Guix for example. That way you still get to have a declarative system too.
If replying very briefly, I think we all need to bury Windows, to make Linux the default, whatever that default is. And then, some of us may migrate to, say, FreeBSD or others. As someone mentioned already, I think the most viable way is FreeBSD, if you want to run games. I’ve read OpenBSD being too slow, since they prioritise security over performance. So, for games, that’s a no-go.
Me, I have no issues with most things Linux. Systemd is convenient, whatever that is. I have never relied on complex X setups. I came to very shallow understanding of it somewhat recently, and I am long with Wayland already (Sway). I don’t like the bloat, but my current Arch Linux setup is close to what I want. I may prefer Gentoo, but I have no knowledge for it, and resources to acquire the knowledge.
If I am to migrate one day, I think FreeBSD is close to what I want. But I don’t know it first hand, and I’m not sure my hardware well supported. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. So far, all rings considered, I’m very happy with Linux. As someone who came from a decade of macOS. I haven’t even seen Windows properly since 7. The 10 was a joke, and now 11… I have no name for it, worse than that.
I’ve read OpenBSD being too slow, since they prioritise security over performance
I suspect all of my alternatives are going to be this in one way or another. Microkernels may have improved as people figure out ways to optimize message passing, but it’s not going to compete with sharing memory.
I have never relied on complex X setups
I don’t think I’ve touched an X config in over a decade – what’s a “complex X setup”?
The *BSDs are good, established kit, but my concerns about hardware are the same. I think another limiting factor is muscle memory. If I switched whole-hog to BSD, it’d be one thing, but trying to run Linux on some machines and *BSD on others is going to trip me up on the daily because I rely so much on muscle memory. I lost my ability to touch-type with any speed on QWERTY pretty quickly after I switched to Dvorak. My brain isn’t contextually modal like that.
Personally, I like diversity. Monopolies are bad. I think Windows existing is fine, because some people genuinely like it and they should have the option of using it if they want to. Same with OSX, Android, iOS, whatever; choice is good. I don’t like being forced to use something, whether it’s systemd, Wayland, Windows, or LLMs. Some things in life you just have to accept, but there’s no excuse for it to be that way in software.
I hate Microsoft so much that I’d prefer them to bankrupt and have some other duopoly. I’m ok with it being Linux and macOS. But not Linux and Windows.
Ideally, though … Linux vs FreeBSD. Since you cannot install macOS on anything but an Apple computer. So, that’s a niche thing already. A Linux / FreeBSD duopoly feels very nice to have!
By complex X setup I meant something that isn’t available in Wayland. I haven’t noticed anything being changed when I migrated from X to Wayland. On some machines I don’t even have XWayland installed. Hence, I don’t understand the ‘Wayland bad, I continue using X’ drama. I imagine these people have some complex setups that Wayland doesn’t support.
I hate Microsoft so much that I’d prefer them to bankrupt and have some other duopoly. I’m ok with it being Linux and macOS. But not Linux and Windows.
Yeah, don’t read me wrong: I love that we have more choice now. Maybe it’s still uncommon outside of engineering teams, but it’s not an automatically crazy request to ask for a Linux laptop at any given company if you’re IT-adjacent. It’s a great thing.
By complex X setup I meant something that isn’t available in Wayland
Oh, right. I think Wayland works better for a lot of people. I guess NVidia cards work better with it? I just immediately run into random stuff it can’t do, or is for some reason hard, every time I try it. I do think those gaps are getting slowly closed and eventually it’ll make sense, but since X does everything I want and hasn’t had issues in many years, I’m not motivated to spend time fighting with Wayland.
Run a distro that uses older version of Linux kernel (before any AI generated code was added) 🙃
I’m running -lts, but mask the kernel entirely? That’s one way of dealing with it!
comparing Linux to Windows is hilarious.
let me introduce you to Richard Stallman, the OG Linux hater. the author and advocate for GPLv3 thought Linux was too corporate, too compromising to corporate interests.
this world of technology is about compromise. life itself is about compromise. if you want to create your own OS, your own programming language, your own set of standards, go ahead. no one is stopping you.
except, you don’t actually want that. you want text editors, browsers, email, and video games. those things depend on standards, and those standards are shared by other interests, whether you like them or agree with them or are morally aligned with them or not. that’s the sacrifice we make to fly on an airplane or drive a car on public roads or use publicly created software.
look into Free Open Source Software. not OSS, FOSS. there’s a difference. you should be cognizant of the tradeoffs.
heck maybe read some Marx/Engels.
let me introduce you to Richard Stallman, the OG Linux hater.
How is he a hater of Linux? Maybe before Linux adopted the GPL, as it wasn’t Open Source in the beginning. Otherwise he doesn’t hate Linux.
it wasn’t the right GPL. pretty sure GPLv3 was a reaction to Linux adopting GPLv2
The original license of Linux was a custom License written by Linus. It wasn’t GPL.
There is time travelling in this post…
Computers are literally garbage; there’s so many of them. Get another and use it for 9front. Get another and use if for OpenBSD. These other software projects aren’t immune to AI or whatever this thread is about… video-games are garbage too. Go outside.
These other software projects aren’t immune to AI
Some have a published stance against AI contributions; as long as they maintain and attempt to enforce it, it’s good enough. And when AI improves enough that I personally see evidence that improves my opinion of its code quality, I’ll change my stance.
Go outside.
Naw. It’s 5am and dark out.
I’ve been daily using Linux for more than 13 years at this point but I too am concerned at the direction some things are going in. I’m on Artix and happy there for the time being. But I definitely have started keeping an eye on BSD so its always in my back pocket if the need arises. We now have a laptop with GhostBSD on it so we can get and stay familiarised with it. But our biggest issue at the moment is gaming and Steam (yes, I could not use Steam but I’m happy with it and like using it).
It feels like it sucks so much that finally after years of encouraging others to switch to Linux that its finally starting to become more mainstream but its right at a time when mega corps are also sinking their claws in so deeply that its finally having a really negative effect on the ecosystem (their claws have been in for years but the community has mostly kept them at bay, apart from freaking systemd, for the most part up until now).
Also depressing that people are uneducated on the long controversial history of corporations sticking their greedy noses into the FOSS space to the detriment of all, and not understanding why this stuff is so very important for the future of Linux and FOSS generally.
I wasn’t as concerned about corporate contributions; Linux seemed pretty immune to the sorts of shenanigans corpo money affected Firefox with, and with the kernel maintainers and Linus reviewing patches, chances for stuff to slip past them, I felt, was slim. It’s the very fact that the core team is leaning on AI more which is undermining that confidence; I’m not competent to review everything that goes into the kernel myself, so I have to trust the maintainers.
Genuine question, what negative effects are corps having on the Linux ecosystem? I’ve also been daily driving Linux for over a decade and it honestly feels pretty similar now to how it did 10 years ago.
I dunno, probably funding the majority of engineers that work on key components of the system.
In my experience having maintainers who are paid means they have time to do the long term work on improving the projects.
FreeBSD has the Linux emulation layer and some people seem to have good luck running steam through that. I have not tried, but I think it’s the most realistic for an OS that isn’t windows or Linux that can play gams.
This is off-topic, but: my first Lemmy account, which is a year or two older than this one, is on midwest.social. I think you’re the first midwest.social account I’ve noticed “in the wild” from this Piefed account. I’ve probably seen more but just not consciously recognized them. Anyway: howdy!
Even if I don’t end up on FreeBSD (I was eyeballing OpenBSD), I may try it just to see if I can get Factorio running on it.
Removed by mod
I just saw this post about wine on OpenBsd so maybe you aren’t as stuck as you think.
That’s really cool! Frankly, games alone don’t restrict me; they’re just representative. I need to do a proper survey of the software stack, maybe make a checklist. It just struck me how similar my situation had become to how I viewed Windows users 10 years ago, people who were Linux-curious, but felt they’d be giving up to switch and so were hesitant.
I can experiment with any OS in a VM, but it’s not the same as daily driving on my desktop, you know?
You might be more comfortable in Gentoo as you have more choice.
It’s interesting how things are coalescing compared to the controlled chaos of the past. I get your feeling, and I feel it too.
I used Gentoo on my computers back in the aughts. I hear nowdays it offers binaries of a lot of packages, which would be a huge improvement; upgrade times were one reason I switched away.
I think it’s great we have so many distributions which offer options. Heck, you can even get Linux with no GNU. Artix (and a half dozen others) use non-systemd init systems. I haven’t come across one that specifically plants the flag with Xorg, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were one. Nearly all of them, though, use the Linux kernel (except for GNU Hurd Debian and, I presume, some Guix based on Hurd).
9front has doom and a bunch of game emulators built in. You can also run Linux and BSD via vmx but it’s probably going to be a bad experience because I don’t think it has hardware acceleration. I know someone did a talk about a native 9p Wayland compositor that lets you run remote Linux apps over 9p. Not sure if it would be fast enough for games but it is cool.
