Thinking about switching to FreeBSD on the laptop, thoughts?

[Lorem-Ipsum]

I currently run Archlinux on my laptop and desktop and FreeBSD on my test server.

My laptop does currently have a dual boot between Arch and Windows 7 and I think I should keep the Windows install there just in case I need it for Uni work.

As the laptop can take 2 hard drives I'm thinking about picking up a second just for FreeBSD and potentially using it as my primary laptop OS.
I'll have to decide on what WM to use, probably a tiler like Xmonad, DWM or HerbsluftWM.

I have also considered Plan9 and Solaris but I feel uncomfortable, having no experience with either.

Thoughts? (I know you'll what to weight in here Plan9)

[Plan9]

Plan9 is a great concept OS but not really practical for desktop computing (though I've not used the latest Plan 9 fork: 9front)

Solaris is another great OS, but if you're looking using it on the laptop then you really should be using OpenIndiana, which is a fork of OpenSolaris after Oracle basically killed it.

FreeBSD though, is just awesome. In my opinion it's easily the best suited for a laptop out of those 3 suggestions. If you're feeling lazy and want a ready made desktop, then there are a few "distros" of FreeBSD to choose from as well: PC-BSD and Desktop BSD (this might be dead now though as I've not heard anything from them for a while). There's also DragonFly BSD, which -while not being a desktop focused OS- does look very interesting. It has it's own unique scheduler, file system and all sorts. It's definitely worth reading up on if you've not already

[Lorem-Ipsum]

Plan9 is a great concept OS but not really practical for desktop computing (though I've not used the latest Plan 9 fork: 9front)

Solaris is another great OS, but if you're looking using it on the laptop then you really should be using OpenIndiana, which is a fork of OpenSolaris after Oracle basically killed it.

FreeBSD though, is just awesome. In my opinion it's easily the best suited for a laptop out of those 3 suggestions. If you're feeling lazy and want a ready made desktop, then there are a few "distros" of FreeBSD to choose from as well: PC-BSD and Desktop BSD (this might be dead now though as I've not heard anything from them for a while). There's also DragonFly BSD, which -while not being a desktop focused OS- does look very interesting. It has it's own unique scheduler, file system and all sorts. It's definitely worth reading up on if you've not already

Thanks.

Looks like I'm going down the *BSD route. I prefer to set things up myself over using pre-configured distros so I'll probably go for FreeBSD, OpenBSD or DragonflyBSD.
I've seen a nice setup guide here: https://cooltrainer.org/2012/01/02/a...esktop-how-to/ so that should be helpful.

I'm finally getting round to teaching myself C properly (as opposed to halfheartedly copying and pasting chunks of code and letting clang tell me how to fix it,) and hopefully by autumn I'll be comfortable enough with it to roll my own Window Manager.
I'm thinking it'll probably be a workspace based tiler with some added features.

[Plan9]

Can't fault your choice there - I do have a personal fondness for BSD.

As for the tiling WM, I think you'd probably be better off with something like DWM / Awesome -where you're encouraged to compile in your own settings- than building your own from scratch.

[andyn]

Nowt wrong with BSD, used freebsd professionally for server applications, it's very stable and consistent. No experience of it in a desktop environment, but I'm sure it's fine if you're prepared to get a bit more under the hood than with the more popular debian rebranders.

Would also stay away from slowlaris, it had it's day but as Plan9 said oracle have basically killed it off. Best part of sun was always the geek-heaven hardware, imo, to me solaris was something you had to endure to play with the cool toys . That's based on my experiences in the late 90s though, probably out of date.

[zeameth]

i honestly came in here expecting BSD to mean blue screen of death. pleasantly surprised

[Plan9]

Nowt wrong with BSD, used freebsd professionally for server applications, it's very stable and consistent. No experience of it in a desktop environment, but I'm sure it's fine if you're prepared to get a bit more under the hood than with the more popular debian rebranders.

FreeBSD is fine for the desktop, even without Debian (et al) porting their user land.

Would also stay away from slowlaris, it had it's day but as Plan9 said oracle have basically killed it off. Best part of sun was always the geek-heaven hardware, imo, to me solaris was something you had to endure to play with the cool toys . That's based on my experiences in the late 90s though, probably out of date.

Solaris is a great OS and hardly dead. It's only OpenSolaris that Oracle have killed. I just wouldn't recommend pure Solaris for anything but bare metal servers.

[andyn]

Well I'm probably biased as the projects I had to do which involved it were of the un-fun variety . I do think that killing off open solaris was probably a fatal mistake though, great way to discourage developers from contributing to your software ecospace for nothing.

[Plan9]

Well I'm probably biased as the projects I had to do which involved it were of the un-fun variety . I do think that killing off open solaris was probably a fatal mistake though, great way to discourage developers from contributing to your software ecospace for nothing.

OpenSolaris was never really getting much developer attention outside of Sun anyway. And after the take over, most of the (decent) Sun engineers left (presumably because Oracle was more interested in patents and Linux than Sun's epic technologies) so the few OpenSolaris devs there were, were no longer about.

From what I recall, creating the OpenSolaris project really was a last ditch attempt for a dying Sun to cash in on Linuxes success, before eventually imploding in on itself. But most Linux devs were more focused on stealing Sun's concepts and rebuilding it as their own (Zones->OpenVZ, dtrace->ptrace, ZFS->BtrFS, etc). Thus I think OpenSolaris was as good as dead from the start.

It's a real pity too in my opinion, but at least I still have FreeBSD

[Lorem-Ipsum]

As for the tiling WM, I think you'd probably be better off with something like DWM / Awesome -where you're encouraged to compile in your own settings- than building your own from scratch.

I currently use Xmonad and have played with DWM, I just fancy writing my own as a bit of a challenge. I always learn a programming language faster if I have a project.

[Plan9]

I currently use Xmonad and have played with DWM, I just fancy writing my own as a bit of a challenge. I always learn a programming language faster if I have a project.

Fair enough then. Good luck mate

[Lorem-Ipsum]

Fair enough then. Good luck mate

Thanks, I think I'll need it