Why I run FreeBSD for my home servers (2024)

I started reading but stopped as soon as it was a systemd rant. systemd, while not for everyone is a good for most people.

I kept on reading because I use OSes that have different init systems, one of which is systemd. Choice is great. Of course, your comment could be accused of being a rant too.

Choice is great, but I don't think we can expect everyone to maintain "unit files" for every init system. If you can and can afford to run systemd it's probably worth it, it's a "nice to have" most of the time.

If you wanna run your own init solution you can but it might be a bit of effort, embedded people often do this while a system like a desktop with dbus and display servers and IPC left and right might standardize on systemd

Choice is fine, but the perception is that "the science is settled" and systemd is objectively better; therefore if you are still a systemd refusenik you're a little bit crazy and more difficult to take seriously.

Very well put. I can see how if you learnt Linux before systemd, it may feel like a regression in some ways, but for anyone learning Linux after systemd it's somewhat impenetrable to use anything else. Systemd successfully "productised" and canonicalised what appears to have only really been a bunch of loose conventions beforehand (e.g. sysvinit, not sure I've never seen scripts from different authors work completely the same).

> systemd, while not for everyone is a good for most people

Are you really sure?

systemd is a tool that automates system configuration with no interaction from the user, and it does it in such a way that the user doesn't have to know how the system works, then the user doesn't want to know, and then no longer actually knows.

When that happens, the user can't make any political decisions about his/her system, the "system" account gets to have higher privileges than "Administrator", the user is no longer the owner of the OS, can't control what the system does, not even what it does with his/her personal data, and finally we all turn into uneducated mindless drones. Oh, wait, we're already there. How did that happen?

Great for company computers ; very bad for users.

The only reason I DON'T use FreeBSD as much as I wish is because it doesn't have systemd. In my opinion a good versatile init system for managing daemons is a must-have for a server OS.

I'm 100% certain, you're regurgitating the typical anti-systemd shill that hates into a future where we might be so lucky that Linux users don't need to know anything about their init system. That day is a good day for Linux users if it happens.

I don't think not knowing all of what systemd does will turn Linux users into mindless drones and it's quite dismissive to take that stance, these are users that chose another OS for their out of their own free will.

It is not sensible to base critical technical choices upon the whims of others.

It's not but it still happens. Network effects and social proof are powerful, even amongst Linux users who consider themselves "technical".

I don't get your point, at all. I tried.

You don't have to belive me, you know... Just look at what happend with Microsoft users over time as the OSs became more and more unconfigurable. On the other side, Linux users, from the beginning until recently, were very competent. They stayed competent because they had to. School is compulsory for everybody a reason - extremely few people learn, unless they're forced to.

"Mindless drones" is probably a little harsh - I usually reserve that for mobile phone/tablet users.

You're turning "these systems work so incredibly shit that we must know everything about it to work it" into something positive while dismissing the state we had before systemd. And regarding learning, it seems people are still willing to use and work in the Linux ecosystem even after systemd and Kubernetes and other high level abstractions that makes utilizing computers easier.

I think using the description "mindless drone" for someone using a device is better left off this and any HN communication as I assume 99% of readers use a mobile phone daily.

I still don't use systemd and this year I stopped using openrc too. Now I'm using only sysvinit. It was very very educational and I even reported bugs in sysvinit, some of them were there for over 20 years.

The people you are attracting to Linux are not the kind of people that will improve it in any way. As Linux is free (well, most distros), you won't even see any extra money. Only idiotic bug reports will increse. "Interent isn't working!!!111 FIX IT NOWWW!!!111"

You're not even attracting competent sysadmins. You'll have more security breaches, more automated hacking (because without manually-written scripts, all systems behave predictably the same), more costly fixes (because consultants that still know the job are expensive).

Mobile users that feel offended users may vote me down, I don't mind, but you know the type of users I was referring to.