Sam 
Woke up this morning #BSD curious. For all the users out there, is there a reason for someone running Linux desktop to consider running #BSDDesktop (of any kind or flavor), or is it more useful to have as a tool for servers? My only previous experience with BSD is brief dalliances with TrueNAS.
royal@spaceraser @RL_Dane, didn't you mess around with a bsd desktop?
R. L. Dane 
Ok, this is a straight-up novel / brain dump. XD
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Aye!
First of all, if you're thinking of messing around with BSD on a laptop... eh, good luck. Things like suspend and hardware compatibility on BSD is more like Linux in the "good old days."
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#OpenBSD will probably give you the best hardware compatibility, in my experience, but possibly the worst performance, because of the very heavy security mitigations (hey, there's a reason they're there. I'm not knocking it, but I *am* realistic/pragmatic about it).
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#FreeBSD is the most Linux like, and even has partial Linux binary compatibility. #OpenBSD is more security-focused, is a smaller and more focused (there's that word again) team, priorities-wise. #NetBSD probably has the strongest ties to the BSD of old, and has the least surprises for a BSD veteran. But I spent very little time on Net, so I can't say much about it.
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Whats the main pitch for BSD?
IT
IS
Unix,
period.
Not a bizarre-but-lovable-and-extremely-useful hodgepodge of unixynness, windowsiness, and maciness. (I'm talking about Linux -- and *not* hating. I'm typing on a Linux box now)
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With #BSD, there's no silly info pages or html help (at least as a primary source of documentation). There's just REALLY good manpages, especially on OpenBSD. FreeBSD comes with (or it might be an optional install) their excellent handbook as a PDF you can peruse at your leisure. Again, NetBSD I have the least knowledge of.
My experience with the big three #BSDs:
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#OpenBSD - This is an OPERATING SYSTEM, not a distro. Very nicely organized. It's created by people who love unix, and is not beholden to any corporate sugar daddies (although they *do* work with them and give their code away freely). I had horrible performance on my Core 2 Duo, sadly. BUT it dealt with S3 suspend on my laptop flawlessly.
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The installer is just a script, but it's relatively straightforward, and there's a very good install walkthrough video series on YT and #PeerTube by "Charlie Root" a.k.a. "Root BSD". Do beware, though -- he's a neat guy, but a bit of a sh*tposter and patterns himself a bit on Luke Smith, which is a rather interesting character.
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Also check out The OpenBSD Guy on youtube. Very nice guy from what I can tell from his videos, and he's got that great Persian accent, kinda like ElectroBOOM. ;)
One more thing about the OpenBSD devs... they "dog food" their stuff. I don't think you'll *EVER* see an OpenBSD presenter making a presentation on a macbook or windowze machine.
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#NetBSD - This felt like #OpenBSD minus the super aggressive security mitigations (Open is a fork of Net). It could not S3 suspend at all, so I didn't spend much time on it. I don't remember the installation process, but since I don't remember struggling with it or having to go through a video walkthrough, it must have been easy enough. ;)
One of the main (I think) NetBSD devs has a presence on the #Fediverse, and is very helpful.
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#FreeBSD - This is the more corporate and slightly linux-y BSD, but it's still a true BSD and a true Unix. It didn't feel quite as cohesive as OpenBSD, but still far more so than Linux, in terms of organization and documentation. Performance was great, but it took 30 seconds to resume from S3 suspend, every time. It would be amazing to run on an old desktop, not so much a laptop (in my experience with a single machine).
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Also, FreeBSD has the easiest installer, vaguely similar to Debian's text mode installer.
Check out GaryH Tech on YT for FreeBSD stuff.
Also, @ianthetechie is a FreeBSD user and great guy to talk to.
PHEW! There it is. :D
@royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Oh, one more thing,
#OpenBSD includes Xorg and some VERY basic utilities in the base OS install.
#FreeBSD only gives you a text mode install. Xorg is in the ports. Can't remember about NetBSD.
In BSD, there's kind of two package managers -- the OS-level, that takes care of the OS file, and the Ports package manager, that gives you stuff like firefox and GIMP.
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@royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
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The OS level packages are literally just tarballs (.tgz files in OpenBSD), but Ports uses a more linux-like package manager that deals with dependencies and so on. There's only about a dozen OS ("base install") packages (which you select upon installing, and which get updated/upgraded with a separate command), but thousands of Ports packages available.
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@royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
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In OpenBSD, there's a bit of a prevalent philosophy of preferring base packages over ports. So someone might use xsetroot (even though it's only bichromatic) rather than something like feh or nitrogen to set the wallpaper, because xsetroot is in the base install. Same goes for something like xlock vs xscreensaver, or Perl over Python maybe.
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@royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
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I tried to use their own cwm window manager instead of i3wm, and got it eventually configured so that it was almost indistinguishable from i3 at a glance.
But it's NOT a rule. The ports are there to be used, and you couldn't do much (unless you only want to do basic webserving and/or programming/scripting) with only the base install.
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@royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
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So while your Linux box will have thousands of packages (1709 on this relatively pared-down Debian box), a BSD box might only have a few hundred or few dozen packages (Ports) installed, because the base install isn't counted.
One more thing I wanted to stress: BSD is an operating system. Linux is a kernel that gets included in distributions with varying level of completeness, organization, sanity, and purpose.
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@royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
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Any package in the BSD base install is "owned" by the BSD. They review the code, make changes to it, make sure it's doing everything they want it to do. It's not just "shovelware" like linux packages ("Want ifconfig? You shouldn't! Nobody is updating it to work with new hardware! Use ip instead. Ok, put DOWN the pitchforks!!!") lol
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@royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
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If I sound like I'm being down on Linux, I'm only being critical of what I love the most, OS-wise. It's so utterly fantastic, capable, and powerful. But it's got its warts, and I'm not against pointing them out at times.
Kint 
🤘💀@RL_Dane @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie It's not just a name change, however; #xenocara enforces privilege separation and drops privileges. #xorg will just eat your soul.
@kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Yes, this is true, although I kind of wish they'd give it the overhaul it deserves, since they're probably not going to switch to Wayland any time... ever.
I use Wayland every day, and it's fine. But I can imagine from the perspective of someone who build window managers, Wayland feels like they got halfway through the work and just kind declared it done.
@RL_Dane @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie Yeah, not sure what the future holds for #OpenBSD in terms of display server, although someone actually got Wayland to do things on it. Saw a post about it on the fediverse not too long ago.
Morgan Aldridge@kint @RL_Dane @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie The problem with #Wayland, in terms of #OpenBSD support, is that it relies heavily on #Linux subsystems. Since OpenBSD has no Linux compatibility layer, that means that either ports or workaround have to be developed. Porters would naturally prefer to upstream as many patches that might be applicable to other platforms and/or security, but the likelihood that Wayland merges patches for non-Linux OSes is significantly lower, if even non-zero.
@kint @RL_Dane @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie I am _very_ impressed with the progress on porting #Wayland to #OpenBSD though! It's just a ton more work to port and maintain.
@morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Yes, I know that NetBSD did a lot of work on that a little while ago, and there was still lots of work to go.
I think this is another case where FreeBSD's "Linuxiness" helps it.
@morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Yeah, tragic attitude with some FOSS projects is to completely ignore anything that isn't Linux.
That's another reason why Wayland still isn't a complete X11 replacement, and may never be. (Although I think in most cases, it'll just have to do. I'm already using it everywhere :/
@morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Someone pointed out that there actually *is* a linux binary compatibility layer for OpenBSD, but it's 32-bit only.
@RL_Dane @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie I think you mean *was* a compat_linux(8). I believe #OpenBSD 5.9 was the last release that included it before it was ripped out. The fedora_base package that was required is long gone too.
@morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Ahhh, ok. They still have the manpage up (https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.1/compat_linux.8), so I thought it was still a thing.
Ok, that makes sense. XD
Bryan Steele@RL_Dane @morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie That's because you're linking to the man page from OpenBSD 5.1, released in 2012.
The previous binary compatibility layers did not "magically" add support for Linux-specific device interfaces, e.g: evdev or ALSA. It would not have made porting Wayland any easier.
@canadianbryan @morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Ah, I get that, and I do understand that binary compatibility != kernel compatibility, which is what's really needed for Wayland to work without a lot of porting work.
Is #Arcan ever going to be used as a display server? I'm still not clear on what it actually *is*, but I've heard some folks in the #OpenBSD world are kinda excited about it.
Evan J Rowley@RL_Dane @canadianbryan @morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
+1 excited about Arcan - need me more networked display servers
+1 excited about Arcan - need me more networked display servers
@ejrowley @canadianbryan @morgant @kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
Does Waypipe count?
I still haven't tried it yet. I *have* used X11 over the network (especially over SSH tunnel), and even XDMCP (haha) going way back, but it doesn't work well with modern (non-X11-native, e.g. GTK, QT) interfaces. It just turns into a really *bad* copy of VNC, schlepping pixels over without compression or inter-frame comparison (afaik)
Have GTK and Qt been implemented on Arcan? :)
@kint @royal @spaceraser @ianthetechie
That's good to hear. I know it'll be a while, and a lot of hard work for that to mature.
It's sad that Wayland is yet another project suffering from the "you mean there's something other than Linux?!?" disease. :P