[talk] Ask Slashdot: Workaday Software For BSD On the Desktop?

[George Rosamond]

Pete Wright:
> 
> 
> On 11/20/14 16:15, George Rosamond wrote:
>> Mark Saad:
>>> Check it out,
>>>
>>> http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/11/20/185246/ask-slashdot-workaday-software-for-bsd-on-the-desktop
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, and Matt S posted that other story recently on a related note.
>>
>> It's an interesting thing in one way.  It's a route for people to get
>> their feet wet, and have "BSD experience" and hopefully move into deeper
>> usage.  And maybe increase the pool of BSD people for infrastructure and
>> dev jobs out there.
>>
>> I think the BSDs are mostly fine on laptops (although I've never had
>> FBSD resume from sleep on a Thinkpad...), and I am personally not
>> comfortable on another "desktop OS."  And it certainly makes dealing
>> with BSD servers easier, since the man pages, etc., reflect what's on a
>> server.
>>
>> But I am also concerned about the expectations of a lot of the younger
>> Linux crew who don't know there is a shell on their box, then have to
>> deal with it in some way, or even ncurses.  It's not 1999 anymore, and
>> it seems a lot of distros focused on being shiny eye-candy and made the
>> transition to Linux from OSX or Windows feel smooth.
>>
> 
> my prediction is that in next several years is there are going to be
> three pools of unix users:
> 
> 1) osx peeps who are using unix w/o really knowing it

okay... but a bit of a stretch for most of them.  You mean iPads too? :0

> 2) chromebook/ubuntu people
> 3) old guard *bsd and non-ubuntu users
> 

I get the impression a lot of the number 3 category fits in number 2.  No?

> what i'm really keeping an eye open for is for someone to finally come
> up with decent laptop hardware that can compete with macbook pro's or
> even google chromebooks.  i've never run a lenovo thinkpad but i've
> heard they are kinda lacking these days.  used an HP for a year and it
> was pretty awful...chromebooks look pretty great, but using android for
> my os is kinda scary.

+1 on the scariness of androidism.

But with the focus of OpenBSD devs on Thinkpads, I have to say I'm happy.

OpenBSD just works on the Thinkpads, from my experience.

> 
> now that i've said all of this i'm really hoping this email bites me in
> the ass in 5 years and something comes out of no where to surprise me :)

I think you are just describing reality today, and you didn't say
anything most people on this list would find controversial, in all honesty.

g