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I actually installed FreeBSD in qemu, and it was pretty painless (dealing with qemu took more effort than FreeBSD!). From knowing next to nothing about it to a minimal working system with X and dwm in a couple of hours -- a couple of hours well spent. I think I can do it in 10 minutes on real hardware...
It felt pretty good even as a VM, and with a tiny footprint. I spent a couple of hours in the bathtub reading about ZFS, which seems pretty ****ing incredible.
I got used to the linux hodgepodge, but having a unified OS seems like a really good idea. I am almost ready to get my T470 BSD'd (it looks like it's pretty compatible).
It is unfortunate that BSDs have not gotten more recognition and users - a BSD developer pointed out that there is Linux, and there are some rounding errors as the user base goes...
2023-10-03 · 5 weeks ago
I believe that all of the processes you mentioned are processes internal to the Linux kernel, so as long as you are running some recent version of the kernel, you will be running those processes. kworker included.
The problem with taking something like Xubuntu and trying to slim it down is that you have to do a lot of research on what to uninstall and what is best left in place. If your goal is minimalism, you are almost always better off working from the other direction and taking a truly minimal install, and then installing only what you will use.
FreeBSD does fit that bill quite nicely. I'm definitely not going to be telling you not to use it. I use it myself. Just make sure you know what you're getting in for and you'll be fine.
I use i3 instead of DWM, but I suspect we have similar taste even so. I like to know what's running on my system, and to know that nothing else that I don't know about is going on.
@marissa: having thought about this one, I think you may be wrong: Linux is not a microkernel and the kernel really should not be starting processes in userland. I think these are low-level GUI-related things, and it bothers me quite a bit. Much like the fact that there are a bunch of Firefox processes even when I close all my Firefox (Librewolf, actually, but same difference) windows. There is just a bunch of noisy crap running all over.
2023-10-04 · 5 weeks ago
@jeang3nie: you know, I am actually sold on FreeBSD. I am backing up stuff, and as soon as I can free my Samsung 980 Pro M2 drive I am going to stick it into my ThinkPad T470, and go full FreeBSD. I hardly use anything other than LaGrange and dev tools, so I am probably OK...
To be honest, it really sounds like Arch is the correct solution for your situation. If you're worried about what every single running process does, then using a distro that starts with basically only the kernel and building up from there may give you the best perspective over what every running process is.
I normally use the archinstall script because it streamlines things a lot and makes Arch installation completely painless, but you may not want to in your case.
Also, if you feel like the Gemini browser UI is too much for you sometimes, why don't you use a TTY Gemini browser instead? There are plenty of them out there...
Maybe https://vanilla-dpup.github.io/ would be good for you. It has few running processes and I optimized it for low CPU+RAM consumption. Unlike a minimal Debian/Alpine/Arch system you need to install and configure yourself, it's a pretty complete package.
My understanding is that a lot of the complexity in today's linux comes from cgroups. It's not bad or bloated, but the threshold for understanding is high.
2023-10-05 · 4 weeks ago
@dimkr I didn't realize you had an association with Puppy Linux. I learned how to use and abuse the shell on Puppy. Managed the first CE release way back in 2006 and was behind the Grafpup distro.
@jeang3nie Yes, I do, I'm a self-appointed "maintainer" of https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE, because nobody else seems to be interested in keeping Puppy alive by fixing years old bugs and migrating away from dead stuff like GTK+ 2, X.Org and aufs. I do some new development in https://github.com/vanilla-dpup/woof-CE/tree/vanilladpup-11.0.x and maintain dpup, which is the only viable path forward IMO.
2023-10-06 · 4 weeks ago
Getting Sick of Linux — My pretty minimal installation of Xubuntu, running with dwm (no desktop or related crap) is beginning to feel like a lead weight. It is plenty fast on the old i5 ThinkPad (I've been scaling down - a couple of years I only used i7's), and I have few complaints, really. But I feel like I am drowning. It is running like 200 processes, without me doing anything taxing right now. I have no clue what 95% of these are. Some are downright scary sounding: idle_inject,...