macOS to FreeBSD migration a.k.a. why I left macOS

Pretty light on specifics. The article has no details showing why FreeBSD is better than macOS for the author&#x27;s workflow, except that there are a lot of processes running and setup apparently takes longer.<p><i>&gt; This is where many people will tell me “Okay but not everything works outside the box”, true! but which OS works outside the box these days anyway? Windows is still a nightmare, setting up macOS took me 3 days the last time, Linux takes way more if you’re building it from scratch. Setting up FreeBSD took me 3 days, however this meant that I will NOT need to change it again for a very, very, VERY long time.</i><p>Why is Windows a nightmare? I use Windows 10 on a PC I built and it&#x27;s fine. I also use it for dev using the Linux subsystem with WSL2 and Powershell.<p>Why did setting up macOS take 3 days? I don&#x27;t even think it would take 1 day if I set up a new machine from scratch.<p>Why are you building Linux from scratch for comparison??? It took me two hours to set up Debian by hand yesterday.<p>And then they say FreeBSD also took 3 days of setup (?!), but that&#x27;s alright because they won&#x27;t have to change it going forward. Leaving aside my skepticism of that last part, the same probably applies to macOS.<p>EDIT: I think the author actually <i>is</i> better served by FreeBSD given the fact that they were hand-modifying persistent packet-filter rules. That is not a thing I would suggest someone do on a macOS machine. But the head scratcher I have is why they would try to do this on macOS (or Windows) in the first place, and why setup times took so long besides the breaking updates.

Hi there! author of the post here!<p>I will answer most of the questions below :)<p>1) 3 days to setup macOS? Yes, it took me at least 3 days, keep in mind that a setup is not just installing software, it&#x27;s also dotfiles, shell environment, automout (I use NFS a lot), PGP&#x2F;GPG-alike keychains, the OS keychain, Firewall (pf in my case), privacy settings, company-related software, etc. So yes, it takes time, which I am okay with. My problem with macOS is the fact that updating&#x2F;upgrading the system crashes a lot of configuration.<p>2) Why FreeBSD? Because I love it :) my company&#x27;s product is based on FreeBSD, my servers are FreeBSD, my operating system of choice for teaching is FreeBSD. The handbook is there, all man pages are well written, pkg is easy to use, it&#x27;s a whole system. Also: ZFS and DTrace makes your life easier. Sure, I can have ZFS on Linux and eBPF, but why learn a new technology when DTrace is rock-solid. FreeBSD is not &quot;just&quot; an OS, it&#x27;s a complete self-hosted development ecosystem.<p>3) WiFi? Yes, WiFi is not the best, but not everyone needs 100Mbps connection. I have a wired connection at home to use when streaming movies to my PS4 (also a FreeBSD-based system), but other than that, it&#x27;s fine. I will still donate every year so the devs improve it.<p>Apologies for the bad English, it&#x27;s not my native language.<p>Thanks for posting and reading!

He says better Wifi and Bluetooth are the only things he&#x27;s missing. That&#x27;s kind of a big deal, though, right? Your wifi speeds touch literally every part of using the system, from downloading packages to browsing the web to watching YouTube or listening to Spotify. Bluetooth is also significant quality of life, from keyboards and mice to headphones and automatic syncing with devices.<p>I understand his concerns, and it seems like everyone has their &quot;why I left macOS&quot; hot-take cocked and loaded these days, but this sort of sounds like &quot;I left macOS and the only thing I miss are the things that makes a laptop useful in 2020.&quot;

I&#x27;m a huge FreeBSD fan because of what the author is hinting at; it&#x27;s easier to grok because of it&#x27;s stricter separation of user space and system space and because it has great documentation. I try to use it for any server project, and ran it as a desktop for a little bit.<p>That being said, the reason I don&#x27;t go 100% all in on it and use Ubuntu is the upgrade process. The article says they were successful upgrading minor versions, but major version upgrades are a real pain. Last time I did it it was showing me diffs of system scripts and asking me to make calls on what changes to accept; I chose &quot;use latest&quot; for everything, and ended up breaking &quot;sudo&quot; and effectively lost control of my cloud instance.<p>If there&#x27;s a better way to perform system upgrades, I&#x27;d love to hear it, because I think the OS is beautifully minimalistic and closer to Unix philosophy than Ubuntu&#x2F;OSX.

Increasingly these days I&#x27;m thinking: the M1 MacBook Air holds up very well, but I also want to use Linux: why not both?<p>My biggest problem with Linux &#x2F; BSD is the GUIs. I don&#x27;t know why but whenever I use a Linux desktop, the mouse either moves too fast or too slow and there&#x27;s no sweet spot.<p>The GUI keyboards shortcuts are all messed up: I love the &quot;⌘&quot; (super) key because then ⌘C is copy everywhere, and ^C is an interrupt in the terminal. I have ⌘← , ⌥← , ⌘⌫ , ⌥⌫ , ⇧⌘← , ⇧⌥← ingrained in my memory (for moving, deleting, and selecting by line or by word). I have fussed with remapping keys but there&#x27;s always that one app that won&#x27;t cooperate.<p>So why not both: shift down from a single the top of the line 16&quot; MacBook Pro to a MacBook Air, and then pair it with a desktop running Linux that I SSH into over LAN.<p>- LAN internet speeds are fast enough that I don&#x27;t notice any latency.<p>- I&#x27;ll have convenient access to both Linux and macOS, for testing.<p>- I can spec up the Linux desktop as much as I want. It could even have a Threadripper.<p>- The MacBook Air will have better battery life than any Linux or BSD laptop.<p>- I can use Tailscale[1] to set up a no-fuss VPN, so that I can still SSH to it even when I&#x27;m not on LAN.<p>- All the GUIs will still be macOS, so things like mouse speed and keyboard shortcuts will all be familiar.<p>It might even net out to be around the same price. My 16&quot; MacBook Pro was like $3,000. An M1 MacBook Air would be $1,500 (with some storage and memory), and the remaining $1,500 is more than enough to build a beefy desktop.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tailscale.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tailscale.com&#x2F;</a>

&gt; Windows is still a nightmare, setting up macOS took me 3 days the last time, Linux takes way more if you’re building it from scratch. Setting up FreeBSD took me 3 days, however this meant that I will NOT need to change it again for a very, very, VERY long time.<p>What exactly is involved with &quot;Setting up macOS&quot; to take you 3 days?<p>I just pulled out my old 2015 15-inch MacBook Pro, reformatted the machine and installed Big Sur on it and got it in exact condition needed to continue my work that is on my main driver.... Took me 2 hours tops.<p>I keep all documents in iCloud Documents, so they sync to all my machines, and I install everything through Homebrew, so once I pull that in, I run `brew bundle install` and let it do it&#x27;s thing...

Honestly, I don&#x27;t get all the hate systemD receives. It works well enough, creating launchers for services is super easy, and in all this years It never gave my a headache.

&gt;man, I did not realize that macOS is that complicated. Why is there a &quot;studentd&quot; running? I don&#x27;t even use Classrooms :&#x2F;<p>I find myself running in to the same thing whenever I am poking around my running processes. There are tons of daemons running as root that are not easy to identify. eg: &quot;What the hell is eoshostd?&quot;, and googling isn&#x27;t super helpful because Apple doesn&#x27;t seem to have public docs for this stuff.

&quot;Linux has systemd&quot; and that&#x27;s why the author didn&#x27;t select it supposedly. I hear this line of thought from people that use FreeBSD often, although I suspect if you ask many of those people why systemd is so horrible you won&#x27;t actually hear a legitimate (and still relevant) reason from them. I suggest anyone that thinks systemd is terrible and doesn&#x27;t spend lots of time in Linux to watch this presentation by Benno Rice.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;o_AIw9bGogo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;o_AIw9bGogo</a>

I&#x27;m doing exactly the same thing right now. But with a desktop..<p>macOS is so pissing me off, half the file system is being locked down, Apple makes exceptions for their own stuff (like the recent thing where they disable network filtering for their apps). Every app has to be sent to Apple for notarisation, and much more.<p>I got into macOS because it was a great POSIX system with great desktop apps and a consistent UI. But Apple is making it into an iPad with keyboard now. The UI is getting more and more bulky, apps are being dumbed down (and promoting even dumber iOS ports) etc. The NeXT underpinnings are neglected. The benefit is gone.<p>I chose FreeBSD over Linux because most mainstream distros are doing the same thing. Ubuntu is pushing snap too much, redhat is pushing systemd into everything. I don&#x27;t want this commercial control again, even though it&#x27;s not as bad as on Windows. Windows 10 has similar crap like Apple, forced updates, telemetry etc.<p>Also I like FreeBSD&#x27;s consistent environment and excellent documentation among many other things.

I&#x27;ve been using a work laptop as my &#x27;primary&#x27; machine for years, and it was a Mac. I was using Macs pretty much since 2005 for life and work.<p>As more of my life moved into the browser, I was curious to try a Linux desktop again; I hadn&#x27;t done so since KDE on debian in 2004.<p>I&#x27;ve been on Linux Mint since the summer, and I have been really astonished at how easily everything just works. For me, it&#x27;s a combination of things: 90% of what I do is in the browser; all the software development tools I use are cross-platform; and the Cinnamon desktop environment is really just good enough for anything I find myself doing.<p>I didn&#x27;t expect it to go this well, but it did.

&gt; Most importantly, it’s Free and Open Source.<p>This is it.<p>If you are ideologically opposed to using macOS, then it&#x27;s never going to satisfy you. This is fine! Figure out what matters to you, and select for that.

To the author, get one of Creative&#x27;s Bluetooth USB Audio devices. You&#x27;ll have flawless Bluetooth audio and no OS support (past USB devices) needed.<p>I use them on my Thinkpads in OpenBSD because the BT chips don&#x27;t have great support still. Will never go back.

I never got the hate for Big Sur design. I personally love it. The new sounds are great, less visual clutter. Depth of icons.

The argument of &quot;you have to put a non-trivial amount of time into setting any OS up, so you might as well use X&quot; is so disingenuous. It&#x27;s easy to forget the day to day conveniences when you are using windows or osx every day for a few years. If you could accurately sum up the time spent fiddling with your <i></i>nix desktop OS over the lifetime of the install, the &quot;area under the curve&quot; so to speak, windows and osx are going to absolutely blow any <i></i>nix distro out of the water. It is parasitic and insidious how many things don&#x27;t &quot;just work&quot;. You will invariably end up wasting much of your life getting software, printers, scanners, webcams, monitors, or whatever to work the way you want with your <i></i>nix distro. And even when it does &quot;work&quot; it&#x27;s not going to be as good as a real desktop OS. I ran freeBSD on my Toshiba Satellite 1905-s301 for 4 years before getting a MBP and I have zero temptation to go back.

I&#x27;ve moved to Ubuntu this week as my new dell xps arrived.<p>The last drop was macOS opening Apple Music every time I put my bluetooth phones in, with no way to disable it even when removing the system integrity thing.<p>Apart from re-learning some of the hotkeys, everything* just works. Font rendering is sharp, Gnome feels snappy enough for the kind of work I do. It feels good to be treated like an adult by my work-tool.<p>* had to install a driver to get the fingerprint scanner to work

I am getting to that point too - except for iOS &#x2F; MacOS development will use a MB Air. After Catalina upgrade my scanner was disallowed by MacOS. &quot;HPScanner.app will damage your computer&quot; .. Report malware to Apple ... so I said let me try my old MBP running Ubuntu .. boom DocumentScanner could recognize the scanner and off I went !

I&#x27;ve got to wonder: I&#x27;ve used FreeBSD and OpenBSD in the distant past and I can&#x27;t see a good reason for using a Unix for a <i>desktop system</i>. I know it works, but many Linux distros provide a much less painful experience, especially if you&#x27;re coming from MacOS.

Windows 10 is rubbish.<p>It reminds me of one of those cheap Android phones that come free with the activation of a mobile subscription.<p>Ads running on your desktop, a UI that looks like cartoon graphics and an App Store full of questionable apps.<p>How anyone can deal with that OS on a daily basis is beyond me.

So he doesn&#x27;t like Linux just because of systemd? In my opinion, that&#x27;s pretty ignorant. If you look beyond all the drama of systemd vs no-systemd, systemd is actually very useful, powerful and conceptually simple service manager. Yes, it&#x27;s a &quot;monolith&quot; and &quot;not Unix-y&quot;, but from a user perspective it doesn&#x27;t matter. All that matters is that it&#x27;s simple to use and reliable. Having been accustomed to systems with systemd, I often struggle to manage Linux systems without it as efficiently. And I don&#x27;t even have a deep knowledge of systemd, just the basics of service management commands and the structure of unit files.

I&#x27;ve installed Ubuntu, Mint and Debian in many different ways, but never did it take three days, though I <i>did</i> end up tweaking a bunch of stuff in the following days. I mean, I guess, if you take that time into account, then the &quot;installation time&quot; becomes a bit longer, but... not really. Or are you building them for very spesific (or odd) hardware?<p>Personally I&#x27;d never dream of setting up any serious production environment on a Mac or Windows PC though, outside those spesifically geared towards it like .NET. But then, if you use the latter, it kinda narrows down your options though. I mean, isn&#x27;t that just common sense these days?

Congratulation! Did the same but from Linux to FreeBSD (mostly)

I find it interesting how definitions of words drift away from their original meaning.<p>&gt; is becoming less Unix-y every year<p>And the examples given are: no package manager, outdates packages, not open free software<p>Doesn&#x27;t this exactly describe the original UNIX OSs? Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX and so on?<p>It sounds to me like a self fulfilling prophecy - he models his expectations on a modern Linux or BSD distribution, and of course at the end they will match what he wants.

&gt;Linux has systemd, not my favorite thing out there, Windows is privacy nightmare.<p>Two questions; I&#x27;m not that educated in this field: 1. Is Windows LTSC not an option for people like this?<p>2. I&#x27;m running it on my laptop and am seeing better performance with telemetry turned of, but am unsure if its still a &quot;privacy nightmare&quot;. what tools can I use verify that my OS is not calling home?

These GBCW posts are becoming more visible, but not more common.<p>As a Mac user (and developer), I&#x27;ve been reading these for decades. These are written by people moving both to and from Apple.<p>They also have similar ones about Linux distros, Windows, Android vs. iOS, and probably Pi vs. Arduino.

Quote: &quot;This is where many people will tell me “Okay but not everything works outside the box”, true! but which OS works outside the box these days anyway? Windows is still a nightmare,...&quot;<p>Well, Windows pretty much works out of the box. I mean it&#x27;s the main main selling point. This and backward compatibility. Which informs me the article&#x27;s author instead of getting the information first hand relied on rumors. That&#x27;s a shame. IMO better say it right out &quot;I hate Windows and I boycott Microsoft&quot; rather than spelling lies.

These posts are always about getting setup - but never about day to day workloads. What does this person do w&#x2F; their machine?

What&#x27;s he talking about when he says `date(1) is outdated`? I see nothing about deprecation in the man page.

Uh it&#x27;s 2020 and people are still switching to freebsd because of systemd... That&#x27;s dumb.

&gt; Most importantly, it’s Free and Open Source.<p>Being professional open source developer since 2010 and Linux user since 1995, I can just answer with: Nope, most important is to get things done. I love to use Linux as Desktop, but sometimes it&#x27;s just impossible to use it, and not every thing is bad. The printing experience for instance on Linux&#x2F;BSD is pretty bad.

&gt; And the hardware is, well, not the best out there<p>After the new MBP this sentence seems dated.

Don&#x27;t know why Big Sur&#x27;s UI wouldn&#x27;t be suitable for power users.

&gt; <i>It’s been 1 month and 1 day since I last touched my MacBook Pro, so, what do I miss?</i><p>&gt; <i>- Better BT support</i><p>&gt; <i>- Faster WiFi</i><p>Come over to Linux, we have 802.11ac+ and good Bluetooth support.<p>If you&#x27;re missing macOS graphics, Plasma Desktop with Latte Dock can make for a pretty and fast macOS clone.

Nowadays it is not only ability to interact with hardware you have to take into account, choosing an OS, but also usability of an OS.

Well, it’s nice to have a hobby. Configuring the OS just isn’t mine.

noob question: why does OP care about background running services? Do these incur a performance penalty on &quot;modern&quot; hardware?<p>honestly curious about this. Thx

Aka, &quot;I left macOS because I only cared about BSD UNIX and nothing else that actually adds value to Apple hardware&quot;.

I&#x27;ve recently moved away from Linux (to Windows) because of bad hardware support (with Ubuntu, bluetooth audio was PITA, graphics was buggy... and the whole lot of things I know and expect from 20 years of using Linux on the Desktop for most of the time).<p>I started using Windows only because I was putting off installing Linux on the laptop... and I wanted give WSL a shot. With WSL 2.0 and Docker Desktop working so well with it, I don&#x27;t miss Ubuntu at all.<p>When I did boot Ubuntu from a live disk to try something out, I found it felt much faster than my Windows install... but I still don&#x27;t see myself switching back anytime soon.

i dont think freebsd as a desktop (or server for that matter) is usable beyond hobby projects. luckily HN doesn&#x27;t have many experienced techies so this post wont get downvoted by much and some poor soul out there will install this relic thinking its better than macos.

For me, these are the three things a Linux distro needs to nail nowadays:<p>- HDPI<p>- Battery<p>- Touchpad<p>OUT OF THE BOX. Like other OSes.<p>The other thing that sounds weird from this article is &quot;Windows and Mac are hard to setup&quot;. This guy must be very very specific.

As the Unix subsystems age, I suspect Apple may sooner or later move entirely away from the Unix base entirely.

And in about 3 months he will switch back. At this point you can just install ChromeOS from Neverware and have better experience. You can install third party apps with flatpaks.

I am sympathetic, use whatever works for you and I&#x27;m happy when open source works for people, but:<p>&gt; but which OS works outside the box these days anyway? Windows is still a nightmare, setting up macOS took me 3 days the last time, Linux takes way more if you’re building it from scratch. Setting up FreeBSD took me 3 days, however this meant that I will NOT need to change it again for a very, very, VERY long time.<p>(I think he means &quot;out of the box&quot;, ie, without spending lots of time configuring or fighting with it to get it set up.)<p>I think Mac OS works for most people without spending 3 days to set it up. For OP, he spent the same amount of time setting up FreeBSD as he did MacOS... I&#x27;m not confident this is typical.<p>&gt; Every time Apple pushed an updated, my pf.conf and automount configs got broken on macOS. They either got deleted or they moved somewhere. Well, the last 2 times it just got deleted.<p>Aha. OK, I don&#x27;t even know what this is... but ok, I can believe if you are using features are more unixy they will work better on FreeBSD with less tinkering. Which doesn&#x27;t mean they work &quot;out of the box&quot;, especially for non-technical users. Just that, sure, they aren&#x27;t any better and are sometimes worse on MacOS.<p>&gt; Unix is outdated and Apple does not care about it.<p>I think this is probably accurate, Apple is no longer interested in maintaining the OS (and installed&#x2F;supported packages) as an up to date unix competitive with other unixes.<p>&gt; Doing forensics is almost impossible<p>What do &quot;forensics&quot; mean here?