#anti systemd

[randomoverwatt]

Shoot that foot!

I have lost count of how many times I have restarted my OpenBSD VM because the keyboard shortcut for readline's reverse-search-history (^R, which is SOOO handy when using bash) is caught by the hypervisor and interpreted as reboot system. Simultaneously, I am stunned at the booting speed of BSD. The package management system, however... I am looking at nuts, bolts, and blueprints here, without a single Volume Control in sight. I don't want to have to build such a system, but if I do, it'll still probably be better than living with systemd breathing down my neck. Oh, and there's apparently a team of people dedicated to "this stuff builds from source code with no obvious conflicts, caveat emptor". I may get to that later in the week.

[randomoverwatt]

Tie game

Well, it only took me an hour to sort of get the "partitioner" figured out,* and after that the openBSD installer seems straightforward enough. However, openBSD is famous for having an extremely small set of software installed by default. I have an xterm. And a calculator. Whoop de doo. Round One: undecided.

Up next, Round Two: figuring out how to install software consistently.

If I survive that one, Round Three will be finding out how to keep on top of security updates. Despite going down the systemd road, I have to say debian's process for keeping a system up to date and secure could be extremely simple and effective. Usually I found out about security issues after my systems were patched.

* first allocate a logical partition to openBSD, then run disklabel on that partition to make your actual partitions. I could see how this might make dual-boot systems much simpler conceptually.

[randomoverwatt]

Struggles

Now I'm finding myself learning to use BSD. Not because it's interesting (it might be), but because it's the only long-term computing path that doesn't seem to have systemd in it - systemd is _very_ linux specific.

I am not impressed with their mental model of partitioning, or the BSD partitioning tools. It is possible that the concept of partitions isn't even wrong in this strange landscape, but at least they have the concept of mount points...

But the real hard question is, which of my favourite software will no longer be available to me if I take that route? My email program is safe, but what alternatives will be available for other things?