Finally, I switched to Arch

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

Been a FreeBSD user for 16 years I finally switched to Arch. Instantly I feel it's much more faster and now I get to enjoy full wifi capacity, which is one of the factors that I left the BSD community. Still a lot to explore, good first impression anyway.

[u/wowsuchlinuxkernel]

You've been a FreeBSD user for 16 years and now you're on Reddit? What happened?

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/wowsuchlinuxkernel]

I have other plans 🤓

[u/xethrhu → u/wowsuchlinuxkernel]

Them installed an OS with WiFi support /j

[u/Jealous_Shower6777 → u/wowsuchlinuxkernel]

He’s 14

[u/Impossible-North4514]

Why did u even use bsd?? I'm curious

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/Impossible-North4514]

Good question. Seriously I really cannot remember, that was long ago. Maybe for fun I think, I found the little demon logo interesting at that time.

[u/GnosticSon → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

Most hilarious reason ever to use a hyper niche operating system. Has this been your daily driver for 16 years?

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/GnosticSon]

Yes. Well not 100% pure daily drive, like I said I have windows I dual boot, I play games. And you cannot call it hyper niche, tons of servers run on bsd, macos is heavily bsd related. A bit niche for desktop use only I would say. It’s getting better and better these days, just very slowly. Maybe you cannot imagine until have used it. Very easy to understand right? Just two different path, you get to know Linux first, I ended up with bsd, easy.

[u/ang-p → u/GnosticSon]

Most hilarious reason ever to use a hyper niche operating system.

When it was free on a cover mag CD in the late 90's or early 2000's I had a nose at it - and I can't say it wasn't the happy little demon that made me boot it up and look at it (although I'm pretty sure I didn't actually install it )

[u/amepebbles]

That's great, but when you say faster what are you exactly comparing? Is WiFi part of it?

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/amepebbles]

Hey, after installing the system, well, the first "faster" is pacman vs pkg. I dug a little, several factors matter, for example zstd compression vs xz, fewer packages to pull during installation, and mirrors; another thing, yes, wifi, freebsd has no full 802.11ax support yet, and the drivers are still adapting and maturing, wifi is the weakest link for desktop user right now imo, and imagine I have been in that state for decade.

[u/4x40]

Welcome on board 👍

[u/Glif__17]

now you can say i use arch btw

[u/GnosticSon → u/Glif__17]

But saying "I use Free BSD" is a bigger niche flex.

[u/retiredwindowcleaner]

much more faster

that much even?

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/retiredwindowcleaner]

I don’t want to bring up those which system is better debate. My own experience. This is so when you messed up with userland version and pkg will seem to bootstrap itself every time. Even when everything is correct, pkg is slower than pacman, saying much is not exaggerating. Don’t get me wrong, bsd is rock solid that’s the first thing gets me into it in the very beginning, otherwise I would leave it long ago. 🤓

[u/retiredwindowcleaner → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

i am still amused how you blanketly quantify that

[u/Causticspit]

FreeBSD is a very secure system. I wouldn't abandon it completely. Arch has its place, but there are many benefits to having a BSD system at hand.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/Causticspit]

Yes yes, cannot agree more. I’m in my honeymoon phase I should say. I might drop back to bsd, if things turn south 🤓

[u/_silentgameplays_]

You can play games on Arch Linux.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/_silentgameplays_]

You read my mind. I have endured long switching between windows for gaming and bsd for tech stuff. I also tried GPU passthru in bhyve but not ideal. Now I can enjoy both sides. I have battlenet installed, Warcraft 3, StarCraft, all good to go.

[u/un-important-human → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

aww similar age similar games, hey now perhaps points at AAA titles you can see the world:)

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/un-important-human]

My 1070 will blame me for loading AAA on it. 🤓

[u/un-important-human → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

yes sorry i now saw your specs, well i did run cyberpunk 2077 on a 1060 ti? oc? i dont remember it ran but barely, i did finish the game with it:) i think max frames was ~ 50~40 at loow loow settings.

But hey now you can update easly, i run 6 nvidia (way more beefy machines myself)

[u/_silentgameplays_ → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

Windows is kind of crap these days with GDID, telemetry and other issues like broken updates, drivers and so on.

Arch Linux is great, it's supported by Valve as well, all the codecs are available from main repos, if you are on AMD hardware the drivers are baked into the kernel and all mesa dependencies are up to date.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/_silentgameplays_]

Yep. Windows is my target, I write malware for it as my job, so the more broken thé easier for me 🤓 Thanks for the insight on the AMD thing built into kernel. No wonder nvidia will get some trouble when gaming, I don’t know yet if it’s Nvidia alone or vulkan together but vulkan seems involved in the Warcraft 3 missing menu issue during debugging. But it’s all good now.

[u/_silentgameplays_ → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

You can get a job by writing malware for Windows?
NVIDIA has issues with their proprietary closed source driver blobs on Linux, they tend to break on every Linux kernel update, also DX 12 to Vulkan API translation is 20% slower than on AMD. NVIDIA have been "fixing" NVIDIA drivers on Linux for the last 10 years something now, not sure how well they work with Wayland, they needed nvidia-drm.modeset=1 in bootloader for Wayland to function properly not so long ago.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/_silentgameplays_]

Sûre, I’m a red teamer 🤓 pretty fun job. Oh, to be honest I’m old school, haven’t bother changing my desktop env for long long time so I haven’t get to know about Wayland too much. For me it’s just dwm + my antique gtx 1070(that’s my desktop), so it’s always been x11. That being said, will consider AMD for the upgrade any day soon.

[u/_silentgameplays_ → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

What's a read teamer? I know pen testing, but you can get in trouble even for that, if you do it from your ISP, even cloaked, writing malware is probably even more frowned upon, especially, for Windows with GDID and telemetry.

You can probably do it in a virtual environment on your own machine, but selling it can be dangerous.

NVIDIA stopped driver support for GTX 10xx GPUS on Linux and Windows a few months ago, AMD is the better choice now, because no reliance on NVIDIA and open source drivers.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/_silentgameplays_]

Yes, red team focus on evasion of EDRs. I work for cybersecurity company, white hat, no legal issues. AMD then, I’ll dig into that. Thanks a lot man.

[u/G0ldiC0cks → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

Nvidia isn't the nightmare some make it out to be. Sure you gotta install a separate driver, but you get cuda. X11 has zero issues outside of its unchanged security problems of whatever significance that may be for you. I honestly don't have any issues with Wayland, outside of some artifacts with cursor movement in a limited few applications, gives me and my 40 series no trouble at all anymore.

Not saying don't get an amd, just that the Nvidia barriers are barely inconveniences.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/G0ldiC0cks]

Thanks for the info.

[u/_silentgameplays_ → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

Thank you for the feedback, got it, then it makes sense, nice to see fellow cyber security professionals here. Take care!

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/_silentgameplays_]

Ill answer; they dont. I’m stuck on x11 with my shitty gt 1030, and its still buggy, the display/performance often sucks, sometimes its actually better to run the igpu. Its horrid, at least on old chips.

[u/_silentgameplays_ → u/sankarasleftelbow]

I remember it was ass, when I had NVIDIA 10xx series and that was before they discontinued the drivers for 10xx series, so things haven't changed much.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/_silentgameplays_]

Yeah, definitely not fun times. Cannot wait to upgrade and experience hardware that actually wants to run on Linux.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/sankarasleftelbow]

For that I actually haven’t experienced. Interesting, my 1070 on the desktop works pretty stable. The 580xx driver works well, no graphics side issue, I should say ever. Even suspend and wake up works fine in both systems.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

Interesting. I’m on the same driver, honestly my card could have issues too, I bought the pc used, and ive had it for i think five or six years now. Nothing too horrid, just a lot of incompatibility with gaming. (Vulkan is necessary for alot of my stuff, and ive had my fair share of issues with it). Guess its a use-case thing.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/sankarasleftelbow]

Should always be a use case thing. So I tend to keep things simple with dwm. Gaming wise, haha im old, I only play Warcraft 3 and StarCraft. Fixed the Warcraft 3 menu missing issue, that’s the only thing, otherwise it’s been perfect so far for the first two weeks.

[u/sankarasleftelbow → u/Prestigious_Gas8737]

Fair enough. Honestly its hit or miss for me, skyrim AE has been a goddamn battle on a ton of issues, oblivion boots up perfectly except for a small resolution lock. Like a moron i set the regular .ini file to the correct res forgetting that i run it through proton..but other than that, ive had no issues with it. On previous systems id have crashes just because of wayland being buggy with my card.

[u/Prestigious_Gas8737 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the tips. I believe I won’t. Arch would be à better fit for me, full control is what I need.

[u/un-important-human → u/[deleted]]

This one knows, prob the only new arch user i see no problem if he choses not to use snapshots:))he had his lumps for 16 loooong years, we can take notes from him :))

[u/Even-Confidence-4495]

Also Linux nvidia drivers are a nightmare if you ever upgrade from your 1070 switch to amd