Two-Pronged Solution

Posted on by Robin

It can’t just be an either / or type thing I guess.

  • If I want the cool GUI tools that let me do stuff like
  • format a USB stick
  • make a bootable iso of my installed OS, and
  • write that iso to a USB stick, hopefully with persistence,

Then I have to use a Linux distro that has all those tools, like MX-Linux or RefractaOS, both of which are wicked-cool, nice ‘n’ “gooey” (meaning they have a GUI – Graphical User Interface), and easy to use. But the price of that convenience is:

  • The Linux kernel: Corporate, politicized, woke, bloated, and soon to be polluted with AI “vibe coding.”
  • The abandonment of the philosophy that made Linux and FOSS great: “The UNIX Way.”
  • The loss of freedoms imposed by the kernel and the developers and coders who write that is dependent on other software like systemd
  • The cluttered, messy way even simple stuff becomes in every desktop Linux OS

So I keep MX-Linux on a separate HDD just for the tools, like when I have to format a USB stick or make a bootable one. 

AND

I keep GhostBSD on a separate HDD to use for daily computing. Free of systemd. Free of corporate, woke, AI-slop-ridden, politically-correct bullshit, and free of all the unnecessary and redundant resource-hogging cruft that most Linux OSes insist on. It’s easy, gooey, fast, and free. And as “ethically pure” an OS as you can find for the desktop.

Desktop BSD

Posted on by Robin

It seems to me now that all the BSDs are server OSes that some really smart people are adapting to the desktop. Perhaps years ago all the existing Linux OSes were the same way until some smart people started making desktop OSes out of them.

Linux has had years to make the adaptations, while in the BSDs the process is still pretty recent, and perhaps just hasn’t had the time to truly become a desktop OS. GhostBSD comes closest of all, and is free of corporate BS, systemd, Xorg,and other corruption. But in order to make it work on the desktop, they’ve had to add “Linuxulator” (a dev’s name for the Linux Compatibility Layer) – complete with some systemd elements!

I sure wish them well in their efforts and I still donate to the project, but too many things don’t work as they should on my hardware. Perhaps if I had a super-razoo machine with all the cool resources and special requirements, I could run it as a desktop reliably and fearlessly. Dangit. I really wanted it to work reliably because of it’s “ethical purity” for lack of a better way to put it, but so very much depends on hardware compatibility for now.

My quest for a fully-“ethical” Linux distro so far has always landed me in trouble of some sort or another, breaking stuff and fixing it, keeping a journal of what I did and what resulted, but alas, that journal was destroyed in the last GhostBSD eff-up. I didn’t think a full back-up was needed since I was only making minor little changes to the UI, but there it is.

My trouble is I care too much about the “ethical purity” of an OS to actually make good use of it yet.

Void Linux intrigues me but I think I’d only get in trouble again playing around with it.

Devuan Weirdness

Posted on by Robin

Well, dangit. My idealism has left me stranded again, going for purity and perfection and getting the predictable wobbly instability I dreaded. Vanishing application – I mean GONE, as if uninstalled! Synaptic. Thunar. Grub!

For hours I wrestled with trying to get my OS back, but even the Refracta tools (kinda like the MX tools found in MX-Linux) failed to make a bootable OS with applications that stay put. On two HDDs (on the same machine) and on a whole ‘nother computer!

As my frustration grew, I considered the following options:

  • Exorcism
  • Shock therapy (using a hammer)
  • Thermal therapy (using fire), and
  • Percussion therapy (using a magazine of .38-calibur ammunition).

Fortunately it didn’t have to come to that, however, since I was able to boot up and install my copy of GhostBSD, and use it to recover files from the non-bootable HDD. All the important stuff I thought I had lost. But I did come close to becoming violent. I hate surprises. And I really don’t think two hard drives and a second computer all failed simultaneously.

Because Devuan is Debian (modified, repackaged to avoid systemd dependencies), I wonder iaboutthe future of that distro, since Debian’s strange choices and needless changes affect everyone downstream. I am glad to be back on GhostBSD, but always reluctant to install updates to the OS.

BSD or Bust

Posted on by Robin

I have little to write about since my switch to GhostBSD. It’s been phenominal, speedy, simple, and well-maintained. Most of my future posts will be stuff I’m learning about my new platform.

The more I read and see online about the world of Linux and Free Open Source Software (hereafter: FOSS), the more corrupt and crazy it seems to be getting. Almost all of the once-great FOSS projects has turned to0 the Dark Side. Mozilla (Firefox browser and Thunderbird mail) is now an advertising company (privacy? Bullshit!) and a self-described “global group of activists” for such noble causes as transgender “rights,” climate change, feminism, and “anti-colonialism.”

The Gnome Project is similarly overtaken with far-left extremism. So is KDE (the other “big” desktop). Almost religious fervor for such tools as Wayland (with equally fervence against X11) and Rust threaten to eliminate any competition, like systemd has been almost completely successful in doing.

Right down to the Linux kernel itself, political correctness, corporate “sponsorship” (read: purchase), and DEI rules the project. So far the BSDs have managed to steer clear of the corruption, corporate influence, political ideology, and misplaced priorities. I have wiped away Linux entirely, withy the same zeal and satisfaction I got years ago when I wiped away Microslop Windows in favor of Linux. May the BSDs ever remain free of the effing bovine excrement that has made a mockery of both Linux and FOSS.

But if not, at least there’s Mac.

GhostBSD and PCLinuxOS

Posted on by Robin

Both systemd-free, both pretty much free of politics (now). While GhostBSD remains my daily driver, PCLinuxOS is now my backup OS on a separate hard drive. I have ditched MX-Linux for a few simple reasons, both technical and “ethical:”

  • Power settings misbehave. I have to manually turn my monitor off in spite of it being set up to do so after the screensaver activates.
  • Betterbird is only available as a Flatpak in MX-Linux, which makes it slower to load and work. In PCLinuxOS it is in the repositories and updates as it should.
  • The cool MX-tool set is also found in PCLinuxOS. All of the cool tools.
  • PCLinuxOS is truly systemd-free, unpolluted with systemd components to satisfy dependencies.
  • Debian (on which MX-Linux is built) has gone “full woke,” expelling “undesirable” contributors for heinous crimes like being white, male, heterosexual, and even – GASP! – Christian!
    This will certainly affect every downstream distro sooner or later.
  • Overzealous “moderators” on MX-forums regularly censure any talk of even technical issues like XLibre that don’t fit the “Debian narrative.”

I’m not sure why they call PCLinuxOS “the boomer distro,” when probably most Linux distributions are used by “boomers” anyway. Later generations are accustomed to taking what they are given and don’t seem to value software freedom like their parents and grandparents do. The same is probably true of all the BSDs as well.

Having a Linux OS as a “backup” makes sense because a lot of little things – even in the fantastic GhostBSD OS – are buggy and awkward. Evolution takes a full minute to load up. Brave browser (which only works in GhostBSD by adding “Linux compatability” which I’m sure slows things down a lot and prevents updates to the browser itself, so to avoid all that I have to settle for ungoogled-chromium and use a /hosts file to kill ads. Updates are easy but when you have a mix of Linux stuff with FreeBSD stuff and GhostBSD’s own stuff, it kind of sets up some troublesome issues with updating. I’m no longer as confident in updates to GhostBSD as I was before. Looking at the forums, I find that I’m hardly alone in that.

Neither OS is as trouble-free as the big, popular one-size-fits-all Linux distros like Mint and the ‘buntus, but they meet my ethical requirements most importantly, and my tech requirements regarding demand on resources, and stupid corporate bloatware like systemd.

The journey continues.

Ethics and Practicality

Posted on by Robin

In a perfect world, there would be a totally ethical desktop operating system, free of software developed by people who hate most other people, and free of corporate spyware and lock-in (you must use only their software to do whatever).

With GhostBSD I came pretty close. The BSDs are largely free of corporate traps like systemd, and can run most of the software I want. In order to do that, however, I had to install all kindsa Linux stuff to the OS. Ungoogled-chromium is great, but not so good on privacy. The best in that department is Brave. Available in GhostBSD only if you add all that Linux stuff so it can run on GhostBSD. No Flatpacks, AppImages, or any way to use software that hasn’t been packaged for FreeBSD. Thunderbird is woke as all getout, so I used Evolution. But Gnome went off the deep end and is also woke as all getout, banning straight white males and folks who aren’t far-left communists from the Gnome project. KDE – well, they’re all insisting on masks and social distancing at their little confab this year. Betterbird is my first choice, but again, not available even with all the Linux stuff added in.

Question: If the software I want can’t run without installing all that Linux stuff, why not just run Linux?

  • Linux is corporate-owned now, make no mistake. IBM, RedHat, Microshit, all the Big Tech guys control the project and pay Linux Torvalds a million dollar salary.
  • Linux is woke as hell. Expelling long-time contributors and maintainers for stupid, woke reasons.
  • Linux isn’t strictly free anymore. For practical reasons it includes a lot of non-free “blobs” and keeps adding more and more.

All good reasons not to use it – and not to add it to an otherwise awesome FreeBSD system. Unless you want to choose your own software instead of whatever they offer (Mozilla spyware, Gnome woke shit, or proprietary stuff that defeats the whole idea of Free and Open Source Software (hereafter: FOSS).

  • GhostBSD is a desktop form of FreeBSD, with a very small team of developers.
  • FreeBSD is years – decades at points – behind Linux. Perhaps that is because
  • There’s no big money backing FreeBSD.

So there just ain’t any perfect world where an ordinary boy like me can find a totally ethical desktop operating system. It comes down to practicality sooner or later after all. I’ll make it as ethical as far as I can, by what I choose to do with it. It’s back to Linux for now.

First Use on GhostBSD

Posted on by Robin

Hardware compatibility is a thing when it comes to comparing the BSDs with Linux operating systems. Because of all the corporate money behind the Linux kernel (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc) and other big support, and built-in “non-free blobs” like drivers and firmware, it’s a lot easier to “plug-and-play” on most Linux distros than with even the easiest of the BSDs like NomadBSD and GhostBSD.

But my quest for “ethical purity” in my tech choices still drives me away from Linux, from Microsoft, from Mozilla, and other software from unethical and “woke” coders. Compromise may be necessary sometimes but I am always hesitant to do that. My choice, my OCD I guess. But after a fresh installation of the latest and greatest GhostBSD, I put lessons learned in my last experience to work and had a perfect, functioning OS in a few minutes!

First, update! Then I used Software Station like Christ used a whip to drive out the money-changers and “cleanse” the OS of Firefox and Thunderbird, replacing them with ungoogled-chromium and Evolution, repectively. Then I installed a few favorites, LibreOffice, Xournalapp, Inkscape, gartoon icons (just for some silly fun), the hplip printer management stuff, and a few extra fonts and goodies. Software Station is a sweet “gooey” (GUI) application that works just like the old familiar Synaptic Package Manager I enjoyed in Debian, MX, antiX, PCLinuxOS and others.

Cleansed of evil and sweetended with a few new favorite applications, the next step was to get sound working through my headphones instead of the little built-in speaker in my computer tower. For that, I returned here for easy terminal commands to get it set up in seconds:

With gratitude to ericbsd, the leader of the GhostBSD Project, for this precise and simple solution. I’m using Xfce instead of MATE, so used sudo thunar to navigate to /etc/sysctl and edited the file with Mousepad. For some reason, a reboot was necessary after making these changes even though that’s not ordinarily the case. No big deal. Sound fixed!

Printer setup for most GhostBSD users is probably best done using “CUPS” like we did in Linux before Linux turned to the Dark Side. Because I have an HP printer, discovery and installation was easy using the hplip interface. “Vermaden” has an excellent page on setting up a printer in FreeBSD here. Complete with pictures so even I can understand it! 😀

Those were my only hardware issues in getting GhostBSD up and running with “purity,” beauty, and as usual, with mind-bending speed. One of the best things about GhostBSD is the presence of it’s contributors – including the project leader – in the GhostBSD forums. They can offer excellent support and some cool ideas as well.

Enjoy!

Balance

Posted on by Robin

That’s what I’m learning these days… balance. On one hand, there’s the over-arching need to make ethical choices when it comes to software, even in the world of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), since some of the best and best-known FOSS companies are extreme left wingnuts. Mozilla has branded itself “a global crew of activists” and spent a million dollars on a fancy retreat in Zambia to host a workshop on “Feminist, Decolonial, LGBTQIA+, Climate Justice using Al” event. Woke, far-flung-leftist crap. Also a Mozilla partner, the folks who make the Thunderbird e-mail client fired their very first employee, who ascended to one of the most important contributors of the project – because he refused to participate in “woke” bullshit. He went on to create Betterbird, a really nice fork of Thunderbird! Mozilla’s former CEO met a similar fate – fired for not going along with far-left, anti-family, anti-God, anti-wholesomeness stuff – went on to create the wonderful Brave browser. I want to support these guys!

Even Linux itself has gone woke. In the interest of “ethical purity,” I went to GhostBSD: No Linux, no Mozilla, no Google, no Microsoft. Oh, and no systemd (IBM/RedHat). Yay for ethical purity!

But on the other hand:

Software has to work. And without complex, resource-draining excesses to make it work on my hardware. I wasn’t able to get Betterbird on GhostBSD, so I settled for Evolution. To get Brave browser to work on GhostBSD, you have to install all kindsa “Linux stuff” that “makes” it work on BSD. So I settled for ungoogled-chromium. For as long as I could.

I remember for years being warned about updates breaking things on Linux. It’s true, updates can break things, but in all the years I used Linux, it actually happened only twice. On GhostBSD, an update broke Evolution and I settled for Geary, which in some respects is nicer because it’s so very simple yet full-featured. The very next update kinda sorta “fixed” Evolution, but broke a bunch of other stuff and made the OS sluggish. Very few of the nice “gooey” (GUI – Graphical User Interface) tools I always enjoyed in Linux are available for the BSDs. And the ones that are there are decades behind Linux when it comes to function, versatility, and ease of use.

A balance between “ethical purity” and practicality is what I need.

So far, the best I’ve come up with is MX-Linux (because I insist on having a full desktop environment), with Betterbird and Brave replacing the defaults, Thunderbird and Firefox (Mozilla). While my “ethical purity” side isn’t entirely happy about using Linux instead of GhostBSD, it’s happy that I can support the two guys that Mozilla kicked out for refusing to embrace evil. And my practical side? It’s delighted.