Post by @MsDropbear42@infosec.space

@MsDropbear42 I do think a lot of the complexity is overexaggerated/outdated, the main day-to-day differences are just how you manage packages and system services, which is the same for Linuxes anyway.

I'd say installing a BSD is only about as hard as Arch Linux, the BSDs all have solid manuals/instructions. You just have to make sure your hardware is supported first, though FreeBSD is pretty good on that front.

NetBSD is my favourite, it's fast enough, has great support for old computers, and the strongest AI policy of the big 3. Only problem is my laptop's wifi card is several generations too new, so I can't use it there yet

Anyway, what's happening with Linux is really annoying, its so pointless too! An operating system has one job, work consistently, and I can't see a world where slopping makes that easier.

@MsDropbear42 Given Linus’ complete move over to the dark side 😡, my thoughts are further intensifying about escape paths. Further playing with my Haiku VM is really endearing it to me. It has almost all of the apps i need, otherwise has solid alternatives, is fast as fuck, is quirky & fun. Atm the major unsolved issue afaict, which would be a showstopper if i can’t solve or workaround, is security. Specifically it is atm only single-user, so one does not login to a session, one simply boots directly to the desktop, & similarly afaict not only is there no disk nor partition LUKS [or similar] encryption, so far i’ve not found a way to even just be able to do, or mimic, a #TrueCrypt / #VeraCrypt function of creating an encrypted container in which one can then securely store one’s docs & data.

If i can’t solve that, then a workaround would be to keep basically nothing important in the #Haiku partition, but access “my” stuff in my existing Shared Data partition that lives on another SSD. In other words, i’ve more or less reached the limits of the VM’s purpose now, & prolly need to embrace attempting to install it in a spare partition in Towie [ignoring the old clunker single-task media pooter, the actual "doing stuff" pooters are "Towie" & "Lappy" 🤪], then see if i can access Shared from it. Were it so, then… well, it all becomes very exciting!

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#KDELinux | #ArchLinux #KDEPlasma
#Kalpa | #SparkyLinux | #Kinoite
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@MsDropbear42 ah well, alas. it seems my brief flirtation with the interesting #Haiku must now be at an end.

• installed it in Towie’s spare partition on the larger of my two new SSDs, in which already are two working non-encrypted data partitions
• boots fine, if the installer USB-stick is still plugged in
• boots into rescue screen when stick unplugged [ie, the installer seems to have put the bootloader onto the stick not the partition]
• with stick back in, boots fine again, so then explored possible mounting other drives & partitions
  • can see both those non-LUKS data partitions on the same SSD
  • warned me when mounting them that due to them not having the BeOS filesystem, & the Beta nature of Haiku, it would happily let me mount them as read-write but advised me tis safer to mount as read-only to prevent risk of data loss on them! So, ofc, i did RO
    • in doing so, i realised this was the puckering of the lips for the kiss of death for Haiku
  • reopened the Mounts GUI app, looked for the essential LUKS Shared Data partition back on the original SSD [wherein also resides Arch]. Nada, zilch… that partition is invisible to Haiku
    • i recognised this as Haiku now delivering the kiss of death

tis sad, genuinely sad

So now, in coming weeks, hope rests with the #BSDs, & this intriguing #OpenIndiana wotsit. Ofc, if these possibilities also fall short of what i can accept, then i suppose it’s just me resigning myself to an inevitability of wall to wall enslopped penguins without any pragmatic escape left for me

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@PaulMcEwan

Not that it's any of my business

nonsense! this is fedi -- everything is everyone's business! 🤪🙃

which version of #BDS you decide to investigate

first off, i simply must really emphasise --- atm my knowledge of #BSD approximates that of Linux when i first heard of it in 2013, ie...

i know narthink, naaaaaaaarrrrthink, herr commandant / col-on-el hogan!

that said, i've been trying to begin my learning curve in recent weeks via research, from which i shall probably try, in this sequence...

• #NetBSD
• #FreeBSD
• #OpenBSD

...initially as i always do, in dedicated qemu VMs in my current penguin, & if then one or more of them look/s like they might be a serious possibility for me, then i would hope to move onto HW installation

i had big hopes for #GhostBSD, simply coz apparently it would already have done all the dirty work for me wrt setting up the DE, but sadly a knowledgeable fedier informed me of it having some serious security issues, so i have moved it off my shortlist

last week another kind soul here in fedi informed me of something else also unknown to me; #OpenIndiana, so i hope this week to also research it, then decide if it warrants also trying it in a VM

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#FuckGenerativeAI #FuckSlopbots #AntiAI #NoAI

@MsDropbear42
"nonsense! this is fedi -- everything is everyone's business!" LOL, I'm quite introverted so I'm not really bold in my opinions or questions. 😃

It might be possible that we have some similarities in that we are somewhat concerned about the impending slopification of the world, particularly the Linux kernel.

I don't have any VMs to play with (and limited ability or understanding to implement such tools) but I have three (older) laptops I use: my Dell Inspiron work machine with #LinuxMint 22.3, a Lenovo ThinkPad with #Debian 13, and an HP can't-remenber-model on which I installed #FreeBSD.

I chose FreeBSD cos' I grew up with Windows and I found instuctions for installing Xorg GUI on FreeBSD. CLI I find somewhat intimidating (although I make do quite well with command line in SAS, Stata, SPSS, and Windows powershell).

But I gotta say, Linux was a step learning curve, but BSD is next level complexity.

@PaulMcEwan that's all most interesting & i thank you for sharing it. fwiw, i "only" use VMs coz i love testing / learning about alternative systems, & though i do have three pooters here, each is dedicated to various purposes already such that i would not like to sacrifice those just to experiment. otoh if you do have spare pooters, then i see no problem in using them in lieu of VMs... & in an important sense that would be the superior way in that you then directly get to assess HW compatibility.

but BSD is next level complexity

this is very intimidating to me. i have come across various peeps, during my brief research so far, saying stuff like "desktop bsd is now where desktop linux was 20 years ago", & tbh i find that so terrifying as to almost be tempted to just abandon my intended bsd investigations. i first came to linux when its desktop paradigm was already well advanced from its early decades, so i never had to worry about or learn the arcane coding magic needed to make various HW bits & pieces work... i had the luxury of comparatively sophisticated DEs with graphical tools available... so if bsd might need me to get deep into the coding weeds just to make basic things work, i'll prolly just give up

somewhat concerned about the impending slopification of the world, particularly the Linux kernel

yes, but with all respect, you put it too mildly for me. i am emphatically against so-called gen-ai & llms, on staunch moral & practical bases, viz:

• largest theft of private IP in human history
• massive water + energy demands as climate crisis intensifies
• authoritative bullshit generation via unsolvable hallucinations
• whole-internet continuous DDoS attacks by web-scraping AI-feeding bots

i'm beyond disgusted that so many humans have again exhibited their despicable absence of morality, & idiot credulity

#DropbearPooterising #Linux #LinuxWomen #FOSS
#FuckGenerativeAI #FuckSlopbots #AntiAI #NoAI

@MsDropbear42 well, i've spent some time now researching #OpenIndiana, via these sources if anyone's interested:

https://www.openindiana.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIndiana
https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-openindiana-and-why-does-it-matter/
https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=openindiana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsiF0Lfl2FU
https://medium.com/@post_18657/openindiana-hipster-an-excursion-to-the-past-c26110673659
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/1ixpwxz/off_topicany_tried_openindiana_share_your/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23K-Bh0YA-M
https://linuxmind.dev/2025/09/04/complete-os-guide-openindiana-how-it-works-orientation-and-curiosities/
https://www.quora.com/Solaris-Whats-special-for-OpenIndiana-compare-with-Linux-and-BSD

though i was tempted to d/l an ISO & give it a burl anyway in a VM, i've decided not to, & thus to end the brief contemplation of this as my possible escape route. based on the research i picked up a strong vibe this would not much suit me; OI is really aimed for server rather than desktop usage, despite it having an old MATE DE out of the box. it has a tiny community, no GUI pkg manager, questionable security against contemporary standards, & i would hold grave doubts of being able to acquire most of my important pkgs from its repos, which would be the only recourse coz, eg, i would very much doubt apps like FirefoxNightly, GnuCash, KeePassXC, RustDesk et al make variants for this non-Linux system. overall, it feels like a massive trip into the past.

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#FuckGenerativeAI #FuckSlopbots #AntiAI #NoAI #EscapeFromLinux ?

@MsDropbear42 For a desktop-oriented "distribution" of FreeBSD, try GhostBSD, that is offering also a couple of different desktops than the usual Xfce/Mate.
There is also HelloSystem.
FreeBSD actually is much, much less inclined to include LLMs stuff in the code than many says, if you seek their official statements.

NetBSD has became very popular recently, but is a bit more manual than the other two above.

https://www.ghostbsd.org/
https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/

@raster thx, i appreciate your several informative replies. wrt #GhostBSD, until recently i was feeling this might be an ideal initial escape option for me, given atm i am very unskilled & ignorant of almost all #BSD matters, being merely a Linux hobbyist user. however, this post https://mastodon.sdf.org/@argv_minus_one/117390721260080755 had scared me right off it.

it would be interesting & educational for me, if both you & @argv_minus_one might now discuss this, as it would really assist me [& presumably also other current #penguinistas fretting about the slopification but not knowing enough about BSD to make an informed decision] -- tbh i would love it if now 👻 returned to being a viable candidate for me, but i would need to be comfortable it is not insecure. ta

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@MsDropbear42 @raster might this completed issue https://github.com/ghostbsd/networkmgr/issues/122 now infer that the hitherto-mentioned [by @argv_minus_one] security concern is now ameliorated? 🤯🤷‍♀️🤞

#GhostBSD

@MsDropbear42 @raster

That ameliorates the shell injection vulnerabilities, yes. Good progress.

But the GUI still runs as root. 😳 https://github.com/ghostbsd/networkmgr/blob/master/src/networkmgr.desktop

Fixing that would require the program to be split into client and server parts with a well-defined interface between the two, like Linux NetworkManager and the abandoned nmdaemon project.

It'd be a big project, but they really need to do it. The way it works now may or may not be vulnerable, but it has an alarmingly large attack surface.

@MsDropbear42 @argv_minus_one hello again. today i installed the new 👻 , GhostBSD 26.2-R15.1p6, in a #qemu VM, as the Release Notes mentioned they had fixed the bug that made it unbootable in qemu for the previous 26.1. It installed & runs successfully, & i am a bit besotted with it tbh coz it represents for me an easy glide path into #BSD even without me yet knowing enough to be able to install either Open, Free, or Net & then setup a working productive desktop... Ghost has already done all the hard work for me.

however ofc i remain apprehensive given your warning for the earlier version, about its potential root security vulnerability. i don't yet understand how i can diagnose if this new one has the same issue -- pls can you give me some pointers on what i should look for to understand if it is better now or still dangerous?

edit:
oh damn, i think it's still running as root coz it did not ask my password when using the package manager, whose titlebar said it was superuser

@raster

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@Tionisla @raster this is a blatantly selfish remark i am about to make 😀 in my case alone, tbh, whatever complexities or difficulties might pertain to wifi in #bsd do not affect me at all, because the scope of my present objective is only my tower pc, not also my laptop. the latter has wifi, but the former does not, so if i ever did manage to run a bsd on it, it would be entirely via ethernet cable, not wifi at all. whether or not that still leaves me vulnerable to a possible #GhostBSD root security issue or not, i still sadly atm do not understand... but presumably my situation should be much simpler than for those who also need wifi?

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#FuckGenerativeAI #FuckSlopbots #AntiAI #NoAI #NoSlopJockeys #EscapeFromLinux

@raster @Tionisla thank you for these latest two posts. i am getting a sinking feeling more & more that in fact i might have NO escape from linux slopbots after all, because i am a desktop user not a server admin, so if i were in fact to replace my present #ArchLinux & #KDELinux with a #BSD, it would have to include a DE, & prolly an old one like MATE that certainly has no ai shit in it, but then if it would have fundamental security compromise due to running the desktop or even just part of it as root, then really i am just trading one bad situation for another, thus nullifying at least in part the point of jumping over. this is becoming a nightmare.

@argv_minus_one

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@MsDropbear42

Are you sure? Desktops don't move very often; their network setup tends to be set once and never changed again. Setting up networking server-style shouldn't be overly inconvenient.

It is, however, very old-fashioned. The FreeBSD docs for setting up networking https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/network/ are pretty similar to how we used to set up Linux networking in the 1990s, before niceties like ifupdown/netplan/systemd-networkd were introduced.

@raster @Tionisla