BSD or Bust

Posted on by Robin

I have little to write about since my switch to GhostBSD. It’s been phenominal, speedy, simple, and well-maintained. Most of my future posts will be stuff I’m learning about my new platform.

The more I read and see online about the world of Linux and Free Open Source Software (hereafter: FOSS), the more corrupt and crazy it seems to be getting. Almost all of the once-great FOSS projects has turned to0 the Dark Side. Mozilla (Firefox browser and Thunderbird mail) is now an advertising company (privacy? Bullshit!) and a self-described “global group of activists” for such noble causes as transgender “rights,” climate change, feminism, and “anti-colonialism.”

The Gnome Project is similarly overtaken with far-left extremism. So is KDE (the other “big” desktop). Almost religious fervor for such tools as Wayland (with equally fervence against X11) and Rust threaten to eliminate any competition, like systemd has been almost completely successful in doing.

Right down to the Linux kernel itself, political correctness, corporate “sponsorship” (read: purchase), and DEI rules the project. So far the BSDs have managed to steer clear of the corruption, corporate influence, political ideology, and misplaced priorities. I have wiped away Linux entirely, withy the same zeal and satisfaction I got years ago when I wiped away Microslop Windows in favor of Linux. May the BSDs ever remain free of the effing bovine excrement that has made a mockery of both Linux and FOSS.

But if not, at least there’s Mac.

Another User Switches from Linux

Posted on by Robin

https://artemiesolomon.eu/blog/freebsd-experience/

Excerpt:

I’m making this switch not because I’m a “power user”, far from it, I’m just a random person who have used computers for a long time to know they’re valuable and you need to invest in skills. I’m drawn to FreeBSD’s three key ideas that I feel missing in the modern software world: cohesion, security, and the original UNIX principles.

The New Microsoft: GNU/Linux?

Posted on by Robin

Check this out:

Just as they did with systemd, now they’re pushing Wayland along with Rust, if you don’t want to go along with it (for any number of reasons listed in the above video), then you’re a “Nazi.”

It isn’t that Wayland is bad, it’s the Wayland only idea. They have tried to kill X-11 (but thankfully it’s still being maintained and developed further as a fork, XLibre).

Why force everyone into a single bit of software that is new and unproven? Why experiment on desktop users with yet another complicated replacement for something that has been reliable for 40 years?

Because “standardization” is the goal of the Big Tech people who want to control the Linux and BSD desktop experience. Freedom, choice, backwards-compatibility, and usefulness on modest hardware used to be big selling points of desktop Linux. Now it’s “too many choices” and not enough standardization to compete with other operating systems.

Competition isn’t what they’re after, though. They want to make another Microsoft Windows or Apple clone, controlled by Microsoft – the biggest donor to the Linux Foundation with seats on the Foundation’s Board of Directors that pays Linus Torvald’s million-dollar-a-year salary.

Don’t even look at it!

Most desktop users don’t concern themselves with the inner workings of their computer’s operating system. They want one that “just works” and does what they want and need it to do. But Linux is less and less free (as in software freedom) as more and more complex and ideologically questionable stuff is included by default. Systemd that logs, supervises, and manages every process and takes up a zillion and twelve terabytes of storage space and requires a zillion and twelve terabytes of RAM and a zillion calculations per pico-second just to run.

Remember when we weren’t forced to upgrade our hardware just to keep up with running an operating system even at idle? It used to be a big selling point with Linux! Puppy Linux, antiX Linux, Linux Lite, “lightweight” systems that kept computers running and out of the world’s landfills for decades.

Is all that supposed to just go away for the sake of “standardization” of desktop Linux?

Not as long as there are people who can fork good software that Big Tech doesn’t want people to use anymore. Like they did with Xorg (abandoned, then resurrected as XLibre), and like some distributions are doing with alternate init software instead of polluting their OS with systemd.

Perhaps it may be necessary to fork the Linux kernel itself pretty soon.

GhostBSD and PCLinuxOS

Posted on by Robin

Both systemd-free, both pretty much free of politics (now). While GhostBSD remains my daily driver, PCLinuxOS is now my backup OS on a separate hard drive. I have ditched MX-Linux for a few simple reasons, both technical and “ethical:”

  • Power settings misbehave. I have to manually turn my monitor off in spite of it being set up to do so after the screensaver activates.
  • Betterbird is only available as a Flatpak in MX-Linux, which makes it slower to load and work. In PCLinuxOS it is in the repositories and updates as it should.
  • The cool MX-tool set is also found in PCLinuxOS. All of the cool tools.
  • PCLinuxOS is truly systemd-free, unpolluted with systemd components to satisfy dependencies.
  • Debian (on which MX-Linux is built) has gone “full woke,” expelling “undesirable” contributors for heinous crimes like being white, male, heterosexual, and even – GASP! – Christian!
    This will certainly affect every downstream distro sooner or later.
  • Overzealous “moderators” on MX-forums regularly censure any talk of even technical issues like XLibre that don’t fit the “Debian narrative.”

I’m not sure why they call PCLinuxOS “the boomer distro,” when probably most Linux distributions are used by “boomers” anyway. Later generations are accustomed to taking what they are given and don’t seem to value software freedom like their parents and grandparents do. The same is probably true of all the BSDs as well.

Having a Linux OS as a “backup” makes sense because a lot of little things – even in the fantastic GhostBSD OS – are buggy and awkward. Evolution takes a full minute to load up. Brave browser (which only works in GhostBSD by adding “Linux compatability” which I’m sure slows things down a lot and prevents updates to the browser itself, so to avoid all that I have to settle for ungoogled-chromium and use a /hosts file to kill ads. Updates are easy but when you have a mix of Linux stuff with FreeBSD stuff and GhostBSD’s own stuff, it kind of sets up some troublesome issues with updating. I’m no longer as confident in updates to GhostBSD as I was before. Looking at the forums, I find that I’m hardly alone in that.

Neither OS is as trouble-free as the big, popular one-size-fits-all Linux distros like Mint and the ‘buntus, but they meet my ethical requirements most importantly, and my tech requirements regarding demand on resources, and stupid corporate bloatware like systemd.

The journey continues.

Xorg, XLibre, Big Tech, and Ethics

Posted on by Robin

The people who make the Wayland display server for Linux really really reeeeeeally want everyone to use it, even though it offers less capability for jobs like multiple monitor, features to enhance display for the visually impaired, and even has a habit of breaking applications that run flawlessly on the old X11 display server. In almost axiomatic fashion, Red Hat (owned by IBM) took over Xorg and freedesktop.org using the predictable and reliable embrace -> extend -> extinguish strategy. Both are run by Red Hat employees, Big Tech Bucks back it up.

But since Red Hat et al wants everyone locked into Wayland, They’ve effectively killed X11, hoping it would die and fade away by attrition. It hasn’t been properly maintained, thousands of code commits have been ignored, and Wayland shoved down everyone’s throat like systemd and PulseAudio were (both Red Hat projects). Naturally a good software project that suffers from such neglect may be forked so that it can continue. That is nothing new to the Free and Open Source Software world.

Enter XLibre:

The new fork of the Xorg X11 display server, already finding support in several Linux distributions as well as FreeBSD. Attacked, as expected, by those who hoped to kill Xorg off and replace it with Red Hat’s own Wayland display server, it has met with some still resistance from those who would “embrace -> extend, and -> extinguish” the old reliable and popular X11.

But this time the resistance is downright venomous and hateful. Those who embrace it are “Nazis” and selfish and yes, “Jew-lovers.” Waitaminute – who was it that waged a genocidal holocaust against Jews? Oh yeah, the Nazis. Strange that supporters of the new fork should be referred to as both Nazis and “Jew-lovers” in the same breath, but there it is. Along with other atrocious insults, accusations, and even death threats.

FOSS is known for freedom, including the freedom to copy, alter, fold, spindle, and mutilate free software for any purpose. Forks aren’t some rare occurence in the FOSS comminity. Gnome was forked to produce the lightweight and common-sense MATE desktop and nobody screamed “Nazis” at the MATE devs. So why this one?

MONEY. That’s all.

Big Tech is behind Wayland and vendor-lock-in to yet more of Red Hat’s (IBM, Microshit, Oracle, et al) preferred default software. Everyone is supposed to fall in line just as they did with the systemd and pulseaudio software. Those who don’t bow the knee are outsiders. But since Big Money is behind Wayland and every effort was made to kill Xorg, this time it’s not just “outsiders,” but “Nazis.”

Large portions of the FOSS world have gone batshit crazy with woke ideology and hostility to godliness, family values, “cis” males, white people, and non-communist/socialist/leftist leanings.

XLibre doesn’t care about your color, your politics, your sex life, or any of those categories. Their focus is strictly on the CODE, that’s all.

I’m a fanboy already, even though it hasn’t showed up in GhostBSD yet, GhostBSD supports it and will include in future releases. So will OpenMandriva, Devuan, and others. Freedom still matters to enough of us to make this X11 server stable, well-maintained, current, and awesome as ever.