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Comment by frollogaston | Hacker News Reader

I wish there were such thing as just "installing Linux" on a computer, and it shows the penguin when you boot up.

There sort of is, but you can't do anything with it, because you essentially have no user space utilities?

For all of the crap that people gave the term "GNU/Linux" it's even more true today considering there are Linux-based operating systems that don't use GNU utilities.

gjsman-1000 talks about "design flaws" in Linux above, but Linux is just the kernel. There is no "Linux" operating system, despite everyone, and even Linus probably? using that term.

If you call booting init and getting a black screen "an operating system," well... that's cool I guess.

I doubt Linus ever talks to the GTK people in any meaningful way, or any other desktop environment authors. So, what design flaws?

Do you call a ladder a badly designed scaffold because it doesn't have a horizontal platform? No, it's just something entirely different all together.

"GNU/Linux" can still mean too many different things. Even ChromeOS qualifies as that. You want GNU/Linux help, you need to specify what DE and everything. Or as the other comment said, what Bluetooth stack. You can say you're using Manjaro Cinnamon and either that's not specific enough, or someone says it's your fault for not using KDE.

I'm comparing to Windows or Mac. There's only one Bluetooth audio stack in Windows. If you want help with it, whatever you find online will apply to you, unless of course you've gone out of your way to swap it for another. Unlike Windows, Linux is open and people can build their own flavors, but those can have their own names.

Don't even get me started with how Ubuntu changed its entire GUI like 3 times so that it's unrecognizable each time. Feel bad for whatever IT departments had to keep taking new screenshots of how to do stuff.

…it’s just too bad that Bluetooth stack is one of the worst ever conceived, you have zero options for an alternative, and you still have to get all your help from a volunteer support team.

Bluetooth is hard. But it'd at least be easier if the Linux community weren't maxing out on complexity before even reaching the hardware. Even Windows struggled with drivers for a while.

If you don't like the above there are several BSD systems that give you a useable OS. You probably want a deskto though which none give.

FreeBSD has a desktop, doesn't it?

Several:

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/desktop/

Yep, and there are (were? It's been a while since I checked) even "distros" of FreeBSD that are specialized for desktop use. The main downside of FreeBSD is that it doesn't dumb itself down to appeal to the masses, so while it's great for experienced users it's a bit painful for newbies.

Last time I used FreeBSD, I found it more inherently user-friendly than Linux distros, mainly because it has a very nice handbook (linked in a sibling comment) with realistic examples. Also seems to have more things built in.

What made FreeBSD harder in the end was just that fewer people use it, so tons of third-party software supports Linux better, and it's easier to find online answers.

Documentation-wise it's miles ahead of Linux, mostly because it's developed as a single project rather than a bunch of pieces. Whenever I need to look up anything POSIX in a man page, I always read through FreeBSD's man page first.

The *BSDs have all the same issues that Flatpak is trying to solve. (ports aint it.)

Flatpack also ain't it either. Sure flatpack solves a few issues, but it introduces others and so the problem isn't solve. Maybe it will be eventually (though the lack of maintenance implies it won't be), but today it isn't solve.

I found ports works very well myself - everything kept up to date with upstream, and they take care to rebuild everything all the time so you rarely run into library ABI issues.

FreeBSD can run one of several desktops. It doesn't have a desktop though - they are all independent third party desktops. It is a subtle distinction that only rarely matters

Ok, I remembered it having a DE preinstalled for some reason, but now that you mention it, I remember installing it myself.

> I doubt Linus ever talks to the GTK people in any meaningful way

Interestingly he has had arguments with them over the years, most fervently related to the development of https://subsurface-divelog.org/

Hah! I stand corrected. Thank you for that. I always forget about his diving software.

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