Sing, beastie, sing!

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danboid
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by danboid »

chaocrator wrote:
danboid wrote:Otherwise, FreeBSD is more 'cohesive' than any Linux distro wil ever be and the FreeBSD docs are arguably as good as or better than the Arch or Gentoo docs/wiki.
that's true, but only about the core system, not about every single piece of software available from repos and/or ports.
so, any graphical desktop environment will work in the same manner as in linux systems, and will need some tuning as in linux systems. the only BSD wit really superior GUI desktop environment right out of the box is Mac OS X )))
Great points, I totally agree.

UNIX is almost 50 years old! I like it and its served us well but its time for something new. I'm interested to see how this new Google OS turns out (Fuschia?) as they've got some great engineers working on it.

I'm not biased towards Linux or BSD. Competition is healhy and good ZFS support in FreeBSD is keeping Linux on its toes by beating it as a server OS in many cases.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by Luc »

danboid wrote:but I welcome these advances, FreeBSD being the only open source OS that could realistically replace Linux should things go awry in Linux land.
Why would things go awry in Linux land? It's FOSS, wildly decentralized and has been tested in court. Linux isn't going anywhere. BSD is going places, but at glacial pace.
danboid wrote:I hate it under Linux every time I pacman -Syu or dist-upgrade as it could all go wrong and if you've not took an image of your OS before you upgrade you could be spending the next few days reinstalling the lot, in some drastic cases.
You're talking about Arch, not Linux. Many other distros have none of that problem. I've never understood the appeal of Arch. Is it because it's fast? How old and/or slow is your computer?
bluebell wrote:But the FreeBSD guys don't want ALSA, they (...)
BSD people don't want a lot of things. They have other priorities. BSDs are for servers, not desktops. It runs on desktops, but it's not a very fulfilling experience. It was never meant to be.
danboid wrote:The main gotchas of FreeBSD vs Linux are:
(...)
Otherwise, FreeBSD is more 'cohesive' than any Linux distro wil ever be and (...)
I am very familiar with this litany on how BSDs have better code, that "Linux is crap" etc. etc. etc. That comes from neckbeard server admin types who actually fiddle with init code, perhaps even recompile the kernel etc. But I'll never forget, to quote just one example, how I installed FreeBSD in 2008 and couldn't make a USB mouse work. After a long session on their IRC channel, I was told to just buy a PS/2 mouse. Meanwhile, I had a 1996 rescue boot disk for Windows that booted into DOS and yes, my USB mouse worked in it! Partition Magic and Ghost ran under DOS with some kind of GUI and had mouse support. If that's how "crappy" code base measures up against the "cohesive" code base, then I've certainly made the right choice with the "crappy" one.
danboid wrote:(...) and the FreeBSD docs are arguably as good as or better than the Arch or Gentoo docs/wiki.
Docs are great, but they're not terribly useful if they document something that doesn't quite do the job. Spend hours reading docs only to find out that the software doesn't do what you want. Meh. Read a horror story instead. Stephen King is supposed to be really good.

Plus, this:
viewtopic.php?p=77359#p77359

I regret bitterly all the time I ever wasted testing any of the BSDs. Not their fault. I am not their target audience. So ask yourself: are you?
danboid
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by danboid »

As of systemd, MS joining the Linux foundation, the sheer size of the LInux kernel... some people think Linux has already lost its way.

Arch appeals to me mainly because the AUR is the biggest repo of Linux software online. The main thing I look for in a distro is "how easy is it to install stuff and how much stuff can I easily install?". I also like Arch because it fast, lightweight and its wiki is the best source of Linux info online. I run it on an i7 laptop, an i5 desktop and various ARM devices.

FreeBSD is primarily a server OS, but so is Linux. Linux does offer a more complete desktop experience, as I've already said.
What I don't understand are people who get upset about people talking about other, non-Linux OSs. I can kinda understand people slagging of MS and Apple for their various sins against users freedoms and desires etc but FreeBSD?

You talk about alternatives to LInux like they're heresy and shouldn't even be contemplated and its the way a lot of Mac fanboys talk about Linux, which admittedly isn't perfect but nor is FreeBSD nor any other OS. You say you've had some troubles in the past, so what? I could write volumes of my shit experiences under linux. I have literally filed 100's of bug reports aganst open source projects over the last 21 years and besides, theses audio-related advances are very recent.

I'm not forcing anyone to switch, I'm just reporting what should be the good news that those who are willing to use alternatives might have another option for an OS.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by Luc »

danboid wrote:Arch appeals to me mainly because the AUR is the biggest repo of Linux software online. The main thing I look for in a distro is "how easy is it to install stuff and how much stuff can I easily install?"
Nothing wrong with that, except that OpenSuse, Ubuntu and Debian have larger repositories than AUR. All of them provide very easy installation and maintenance of packages, so "the biggest repo of Linux software online" AUR is not.
danboid wrote:I also like Arch because it fast, lightweight and its wiki is the best source of Linux info online.
I also like their wiki, have used it many times, but you don't have to run Arch to use their documentation. Just saying.
danboid wrote:FreeBSD is primarily a server OS, but so is Linux. Linux does offer a more complete desktop experience, as I've already said.
Linux became a hybrid purpose OS a long time ago, with much, much more emphasis on the desktop experience than it used to have years ago. Maybe the same will happen to FreeBSD, but that will be a terribly slow transition because FreeBSD only takes two kinds of machine into consideration: the servers and the desktop one might need or want to remotely manage servers. They scoff at a lot of things that the typical desktop user takes for granted.
danboid wrote:What I don't understand are people who get upset about people talking about other, non-Linux OSs.
I am not upset, and I understand that you don't understand. You clearly want to point out flaws in Linux and extoll BSD, but won't accept that anyone do the exact opposite -- on a Linux forum, no less -- with perfectly valid and verifiable argumentation. OK. But I don't think that forums work quite that way. Forum members will reply, whether they agree or not. I believe they will reply more often when they don't agree, so as to stave off misinformation. Our community is somewhat anal retentive in regard to accuracy.
danboid wrote:I can kinda understand people slagging of MS and Apple for their various sins against users freedoms and desires etc but FreeBSD?
There you go. Why not FreeBSD? Is it sacred? Is it untouchable? Is it beyond reproach? Is it a religion to you?
danboid wrote:You talk about alternatives to LInux like they're heresy and shouldn't even be contemplated
I am saying that they should be contemplated if they're right for you. I suppose you know what is right for you, but just as much as you assume that there might be people here -- in a Linux forum -- who might be interested in reading random comments on BSD, I assume there might be people here who might be interested in reading random comments on BSD, but have no clue about it and might be interested in both the positive and negative arguments, not just either one. The way I'm doing it, it's called a "discussion." It's a rather interesting concept. Extremely popular.
danboid wrote:I'm not forcing anyone to switch, I'm just reporting what should be the good news that those who are willing to use alternatives might have another option for an OS.
I'm not forcing you to refrain from sharing your opinions, I'm just reporting what could be spanners in the works of anyone who considers moving from Linux to a BSD OS. I've been there, I've done that, and I am sharing my views on it. Anyone who reads this thread is free to assess the arguments from both sides, reach their own conclusions and make their own decisions.
danboid
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by danboid »

There you go. Why not FreeBSD? Is it sacred? Is it untouchable? Is it beyond reproach? Is it a religion to you?
FreeBSD is fully free and open source, hence morally/ethically/"freedom" superior to Windows and macOS, hence Linux users have less reasons to bash it.

Last time I checked (about a year ago) there were almost twice as many packages in the AUR vs the Debuntu repos. I'd be amazed if opensuse, with its much smaller userbase, even comes close.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by Luc »

danboid wrote:Last time I checked (about a year ago) there were almost twice as many packages in the AUR vs the Debuntu repos. I'd be amazed if opensuse, with its much smaller userbase, even comes close.
These are my sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compariso ... tributions
openSUSE: 69,367 packages
Ubuntu: 58,318 packages
Debian: 56,864 packages
Trisquel: 52,748 packages
Mint: 50,781 packages

https://aur.archlinux.org/
AUR: 40,181 packages

I expect AUR's page to be updated more often than any Wikipedia page, so I believe all the numbers taken from Wikipedia to be actually larger in reality.

If you know there is anything wrong with those numbers, please let us know.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by chaocrator »

i don't know how they count, but what is single package in Arch/AUR, can often be double or even triple package in other redhat/debian-like distros (e.g. somepackage, somepackage-dev and sometimes somepackage-doc). so it's not that easily comparable due to different packaging policies.

as for my personal experience, AUR does have the largest number of audio production related software of all distros i tried.
danboid
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by danboid »

Chaocrator makes a very good point - Arch doesn't have separate -dev and -doc packages unlike suse/RH/Deb etc. I am absolutely willing to bet the farm that the AUR has more unique packages.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by tramp »

Funny it is, isn't it. :lol:
So, debian has right now 61831 packages in the repository's.
arch has 6143 packages according to https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?sort=&arch=x86_64
and aur has 42913 packages available.

Now, to make a point, packages in aur needs to be build by yourself, don't they?
Now, when I start to count in the packages which I could build by myself on my debian machine, well, "put huge number you like here".

But, to be honest, all that means nothing. What counts, is, that the system runs smooth and stable, and be up-to-date at any time I wont it.
This is true for arch and as well for debian/sid.
But to believe that arch is easier to drive then a sid machine, is nonsense. From my experience as developer I could tell you, that it will almost ever be the arch people who are bitten as first by a bug from a upgrade. Before it then hit's debian/sid, most bugs been solved already. This means mostly only a delay of several day's.

And even believe that arch has more audio tools in the repos is questionable, given that you must build them by yourself. That, I could (and do) do on any distribution. Building debian packages, for example, is a simple 2-liner.

I don't know much about open-suse, haven't used it the last 10 years or so, but, according to distro watch, open suse is on the place 5 from the top searched distros, arch, is on place 13, behind fedora, elementary, ubuntu, debian and mint. Mint seems to be the most popular distro at time, and I must admit, that, if I put a distro on a linux beginners PC, I always use MInt for them.
https://distrowatch.com/?language=EN

All that said, I'm glad to see that FreeBSD seems to make the first steps to become useable for audio production.

regards
hermann
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danboid
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by danboid »

tramp wrote: Now, to make a point, packages in aur needs to be build by yourself, don't they?
Now, when I start to count in the packages which I could build by myself on my debian machine, well, "put huge number you like here".
Yes, AUR packages need to be built but packer, pacaur and the various other AUR helpers automate the process, inc. downloading and/or building all required deps. The majority of Linux packages only take a few seconds to build on modern hardware and most of the really big stuff (Qt, desktops, FF etc) has official binary packages.

I was mainly a Debian user for the first 15 or so years of being a Linux user but I've been all Arch for the last 5 years or so. Arch binary packages install much faster than .debs, its easier to create PKGBUILDs than debs, AUR brings me more software and its more up-to-date. I do not miss Deb/apt at all, quite the opposite.

I wouldn't recommend Arch or FreeBSD Linux/UNIX noobs. I used to recommend Ubuntu/Mint to Linux noobs but I've been unhappy with Ubuntu and Mint for a few years now. On my machines I have several issues under Ubuntu that aren't present under Arch - wifi and video probs mainly. Maybe, in a year or two, Solus will become a distro I can confidently install for Linux noobs?

I've not tried opensuse in a decade or so myself. It's time I gave that and Fedora another go. They may be better newb distros but I can't see them tempting me away from Arch. For my personal machines, I prefer latest and greatest over "stability". Arch is usually stable enough for my needs.
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chaocrator
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by chaocrator »

tramp wrote:And even believe that arch has more audio tools in the repos is questionable, given that you must build them by yourself. That, I could (and do) do on any distribution. Building debian packages, for example, is a simple 2-liner.
apples to oranges.
AUR provides ready to use PKGBUILDs.
building debian package from source means at least writing debian/control, that may be as easy as running two-liner … or may not.
i even not mention other ovecomplicated preparations required to make proper debian package.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by tramp »

chaocrator wrote:AUR provides ready to use PKGBUILDs.
building debian package from source means at least writing debian/control, that may be as easy as running two-liner … or may not.

Code: Select all

dh_make -y -s -n -e $(USER)@org -p $(DEBNAME) -c gpl 
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -us -uc -b 
replace debname with package_1.0 and be done.
the "proper ready to use PKGBUILD" is simply not needed on debian, all that get be done by dh_make.
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chaocrator
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by chaocrator »

hmmm... when i had to build debian package last time (about 2009), there was no such thing as dh-make )
anyway, thanks a lot for pointing to that, now i'm going to package all stuff that i have in my /usr/local properly.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by CrocoDuck »

I think this discussion is getting on the pointless side.

There are different OS out of there, many different version/distributions of each. Each one with its own unique attributes, features, pros and cons.

I am with Arch because I like pacman and how the repositories work. I prefer it over the different Dabian branches and apt as they are not as straightforward to use for me. I don't find it unstable for my needs (as I already expressed few posts ago) and I like the way Arch makes simple to build a system perfectly in concert with my need, with all the components I want. Arch makes also simple to downgrade packages something should go wrong and I feel like I overall maintain a tighter control over the system. I also like that Arch packages appear to be closer to mainstream releases. I most often just don't care about what Ubuntu devs (or other distro devs) add to (few) packages. However, I take good care of my Arch by updating each day and taking manual interventions right away. This way it stays pretty stable. I even installed Arch on a machine we use at work for FEM/BEM numerical simulations as I can fine tune the numerical solvers PKGBUILDs for maximal efficiency, as well as having all the software I need in the AUR. It is important for this software to be up to date as we need the new features/solvers as soon as they are available. At the university where I studied my teachers use Gentoo in order to have a system as optimized as it is possible to get. Arch allowed me to compromise: I optimize few packages building them from source with appropriate flags while the rest of the system is installed and managed easily with pre-built packages. Optimal right? No. Optimal for my particular way of doing things, both in personal life and at work.

And I am with Debian too. I use Debian stable on all the computers I don't interact often. An update on Arch after a month can break things. An update on Debian stable after a month... not really. I have currently 3 computers I interact few times a year. Debian takes care of not making them rotten over time. And I love it just slightly less than how I love Arch.

We are all adults and we should know it by now: there isn't a best distribution and people having a preference for a distribution different from yours are not crazy or stupid.

As for being interested in FreeBSD: I never used it. Still, I am interested in it as I am in every piece of FLOSS software. For the same reason I am also interested Open Indiana or in not-unix projects like Haiku OS or Kolibri OS. Why?

Because it is fun. Because I am curious. Because if, at some point they became good for me, I want to start using them.
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Re: Sing, beastie, sing!

Post by chaocrator »

same here. Arch / Ubuntu / Alpine.
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