Some thoughts on that, Reddit has half a billion monthly active users. Lemmy has about 50k monthly active users. That's .01% or one ten thousandth. We won't be displacing Reddit anytime soon, but then we don't want to. That's the main problem with Reddit, it's too damn big and too damn corporate. The main thing is Lemmy sees enough growth to stay relevant and viable. It doesn't have to compete with anyone.

[–] pensivepangolin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did rm -r * / the first time I ever jailbroke an iPhone by spazzing and hitting enter before I’d finished typing the full command. (I’m terrible at mobile typing.) I’ll never forget the full body sweat that put me in immediately.

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did that once many years ago on a Linux system, wanted to delete a directory tree, but I was logged in as root and didn't realize I was at the root prompt. Wiped out the whole drive. Not a big deal since it was just a test install so I was being careless anyway.

Back then Linux didn't protect root from making stupid mistakes. I think now you need another switch to actually delete the root directory. I've since gone to using FreeBSD mainly and I haven't tried it there, but I think at root as root you can still wipe the drive with that command. FreeBSD is less idiot proof than Linux. I think iOS is based on BSD Unix, isn't it?

[–] pensivepangolin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Woof. I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s done these things!

I want to say that you’re right, but I’m not NEARLY as familiar with *BSD or it’s history as I am with Linux. My understanding, though, is that iOS/macOS are based upon Darwin, and that Darwin derives a fairly significant portion of its code base from BSD. So, in part I believe the answer is yes.

As a total side note: do you have a recommendation for a good BSD derivative distribution to try? I’ve tried probably 15 Linux distros, but never made it to BSD-world!

[–] rm_dash_r_star@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

do you have a recommendation for a good BSD derivative distribution to try?

The thing about BSD is it's fully POSIX compliant which can be good and bad. The good is it's highly consistent in terms of architecture and how things operate. The bad is standards constraints can limit flexibility. Linux is somewhat POSIX compliant, but has a tendency to go off the rails at times. In any case if you're comfortable with Linux you'll be comfortable with BSD right out of the gate.

Linux can suffer a lot from fragmentation due it's market bazaar style development. FreeBSD is run by a single entity responsible for design top to bottom. There's been some big changes to Linux in modern times I don't really care for (such as systemd). With BSD you always know what to expect. You won't get blindsided by some off the wall change in architecture or design which happens a lot with Linux.

There's a number of BSD distributions that are open source and free. The main open source BSD distros are FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonFly BSD. FreeBSD is most popular and is designed to be good all around. It's probably going to have the best device support, but other BSDs can have other strengths. For example DragonFly BSD is stronger for desktop use.

Honestly the best application for BSD is in a sever or development environment. Linux is more advanced when it comes to support for desktop use. Though I think BSD provides a much cleaner and consistent operating system as it conforms to specific standards. You can get it to work well for desktop use with a little extra work and preselection of compatible hardware.