Comment 2RBA Re: Linux-specific dependencies ?

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Linux-specific dependencies ? (Score: 1)

by seriously@pipedot.org on 2014-08-28 12:24 (#2R5N)

many desktops now depend on Linux-specific functionality that makes the port almost impossible.
As a Linux user considering a move to *BSD someday, apart from Gnome dependency on systemd, are there other Linux-specific functionalities that I should be aware of ?

Besides, rumor has it that OpenBSD would start development of an api-compatible systemd replacement to solve that specific issue, but I haven't seen any news on that topic yet.

Re: Linux-specific dependencies ? (Score: 4, Informative)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-08-28 14:42 (#2R75)

There's a somewhat good discussion of it here: https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?t=45658 and here: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-May/100411.html

There's also the fact that the BSDs are traditionally server, not desktop OSes, and Gnome3 is a very unfriendly, heavyweight desktop with lots of packages and dependencies and high resource demands from the hardware. That makes it unsuitable for servers.

That said, it's apparently running on OpenBSD, which is somewhat of a minor miracle.

Re: Linux-specific dependencies ? (Score: 1)

by seriously@pipedot.org on 2014-08-28 18:57 (#2RBA)

There's also the fact that the BSDs are traditionally server, not desktop OSes
I'm aware of that but I thought that PC-BSD was precisely the more desktop-oriented version of FreeBSD. My usual workflow involves vim/cmake/C/bash/git/Matlab and I usually stay in userspace (so no low-level kernel dev). I also have some personnal LAMP projects. All of which I thought as mostly OS agnostic things.

What compromises would I have to make if I were to use PC-BSD or FreeBSD with another DE* for such a R&D desktop ? (i.e. as opposed to a personal computer, for which I'd probably stick to Linux for now)

*certainly not Gnome 3, mind you ... ;-)

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