While other fields embraced minimalism, tech became bloated. Why do we use complex, oversized systems for simple jobs? It's like taking a semi-truck to buy salad. This post explores a return to efficient, low-cost, and minimalist computing.
Ever heard of vibe coding?
It’s when the code looks fine, tests pass, vibes are good - so it goes to production. Even if it’s wide open to SQL injection.
I’ve seen it happen.
AI wrote it. Devs trusted it. Management loved it.
Nobody understood it.
We’re trading skill for speed.
And that’s how we lose our freedom.
Not exactly. Just a few people who were diverting large amounts of the company’s money into their personal bank accounts, taking advantage of the fact that that type of business, at the time, had a particular tax regime and no direct tracking of the amounts received in payments.
We're talking around 2009 — I don't recall the exact period, but that’s the era. For backups, I used rsync-based syncs and kept history by using hard links and rsync on top of those. I also had a Perl script that automated the whole thing, but I’ve long since forgotten its name.
As for the rest — I hear you, and I totally agree. But at the time, I was young and more focused on building things with healthy clients who genuinely wanted to create something good, rather than trying to salvage a situation that, honestly, was nearly beyond saving.
I switched the ALIX to FreeBSD for other tasks, and FreeBSD (with its native read only support) was perfect for the new workload.
The goal of truncating the sentences in that way was precisely to increase the suspense a bit, but I believe I miserably failed, making it just less readable.
Sure, I can say this. The person I would have called, someone very close to me, would have been extremely disappointed to learn what was happening. They were very proud of having helped, during difficult times, the very person who was now threatening me. And since this person close to me was facing serious health issues (though still had authority), I chose to avoid causing them further pain that, ultimately, would have been pointless at that moment.
Author's note: Many readers, understandably struck by the severity of the events, have speculated about the involvement of organized crime. I want to clarify that, while the situation was extremely problematic and dishonest, that wasn't the case. The "worst parts" I alluded to referred to other internal dynamics, abuses of trust, and improprieties that I prefer not to detail further for privacy reasons and to avoid weighing down the narrative.
I’m the author of the post. I hinted, in a cryptic sentence near the end, that I necessarily had to leave out the worst parts of the story. No, no organized crime. But yes, there were people who appropriated resources that weren’t theirs and used every tool at their disposal to avoid scrutiny. To keep it vague, let’s just say some of the people involved had means that could seriously harm the businesses and their owners. And since these were primary businesses, that would have been a serious problem. The owners, knowing this, tried to find solutions but couldn’t really “afford” to remove the people involved. To be specific, in the end the owners themselves were aware of what was happening, but hoped to resolve it with a few more checks. Eventually, I realized that as long as there was enough money for everyone, they were okay with the ongoing theft.
An updated personal retrospective from 2015, detailing over two decades of experiences (2001-2025) with Apple product reliability, from iMacs and iBooks to iPhones and MacBooks, highlighting recurring issues despite premium pricing.
After 25 years, I reconnected with a friend through a 1998 email, highlighting the lasting power of open standards. This personal journey underscores the risk of relying on fleeting proprietary tech. In our digital era, choosing lasting platforms is more vital than ever.
No, after 20 years of use and comparative testing of similar setups. Frankly, I have always placed little importance on benchmarks as I consider them extremely specific. I am interested in real-world use cases.
The goal of the talk and the article is not to urge people to migrate all their setups, but simply to share my experience and the results achieved. To encourage the use of BSDs for their own purposes as well. It’s not to say that they are the best solution; there is no universal solution to all problems, but having a range of choices can only be positive.
As specified in several parts, the tests were conducted while maintaining and using BSD-based infrastructures for over 20 years. In some cases, Linux was used for various reasons (commercial, ideological, because they were inherited infrastructures managed by others, etc.), but the results were anticipated. I did not expect a performance degradation, and in any case, having set up the systems in a mirrored environment, there was always the possibility to revert in a few minutes.
They're paying for a service. For example, if their Nextcloud is working and is stable, they don't care if it's running on Linux, FreeBSD, OmniOS, etc.
It's in the contract we have - and they're fine with it.
I've a contract with those clients, and I can move the VMs, change the services, etc. freely as long as it doesn't cost more than the amount we've previously set.
Otherwise, I'd never dare to do something like that.
And I'm not so crazy as to do such an operation without the appropriate tests and foundations. Of course, when I started, I had all the conditions to be able to do it, and I had already conducted all possible tests. :-)
Not an abuse at all. I've a contract with those clients, and I can move the VMs, change the services, etc. freely as long as it doesn't cost more than the amount we've previously set.
Otherwise, I'd never dare to do something like that.
The slides, the video, and the text behind the presentation at EuroBSDCon 2024 - 'Why and how we're migrating many of our servers from Linux to the BSDs.'
man pages will still work, the man command will be a bit slower.
The reason is that that file is quite big, so if you're using a small embedded device you could use most of your ram just to store that file.