Agreed, had to check out wikipedia for answers...not that that's unusual even when I have a decent understanding of something.

I still use Arch on my laptop, so I've given it a shot. Even so, I still prefer the old rc.conf configuration and plaintext log files to systemd.

How up-to-date are the apps? Comparable to FreeBSD? I always thought about giving another *BSD a shot, but FreeBSD has always been rock-solid for me.

My understanding is that KDE will not ever require systemd (I forget where, but I saw a discussion on this by the devs). I think their stance was that they'll always strive to be cross-platform.

Lol I'd ask if anything ever materialized, but sadly, I believe I already know the answer -__-

To qualify this, I had been an avid Arch user since about '09-'10. Loved it's minimalism and the rc.conf file. Loved how (similar to FreeBSD) I only installed what I needed, and all apps were the vanilla upstream version.

One day, I found myself in need of a quick install to my gaming PC which had been running W7 exclusively -- i.e., get it into a condition where they could do the basics (web, email, etc.). I had the latest (at the time) Fedora iso and figured I'd just get that installed really quick so that the user could be back up ASAP (I normally recommend Mandriva/Mageia to newcomers). Upon attempting to complete some menial task, I realized that the entire underlying system had changed. I couldn't 'chkconfig -- list' , I couldn't 'service [svc] restart'. I got pissed. I then recalled why I stopped using Fedora in the first play a couple years previously: shit changes too damn much. I found myself trying to quickly learn systemd to get this system operable for the moment, but then as soon as I had the time, I reinstalled with Arch which I figured would ALWAYS hold themselves to the higher (IMHO) standard and the KISS/Unix philosophy. Not 2 months after the above adventure, I learned about the Arch dev's planned init obselecense in favor of systemd. There were HUGE arguments on the mailing lists because of the decision, and -- while I'm very open-minded and would be willing to try new things given (a) adequate reasoning behind the decision for the new "thing" and (b) I'm grateful for the time/effort put in by the devs -- I was VERY put off by the Arch devs stance of "this is what it is, no discussion, if you don't like it then fuck off". When they began censoring dissenting opinions, I knew it was time to "vote" with my feet and go to a system that fits my needs -- sadly, Arch no longer fit that.

And I'm by no means a zealot and though I advocate Linux and *BSD, I'm of the opinion that people should use what works best for them, be that Windows, Ubuntu, OSX or anything else (3 of my personally most-hated OS's). Though I'll suggest that Linux can do anything those can and more, I'll never try to convince someone that they should use X operating system just because everyone is different and has specific things they like in a system, and it'll almost assuredly be different than what I like.

Gentoo does in fact seem like something I'd like to work with and I've had the desire to retry an install (my only attempt was way back when I was still a newcomer to linux...needless to say I was overwhelmed), and I had a co-worker who advocated and swore by it. I've always found it to be a Linux for BSD users, haha -- if I'm not mistaken, a lot of it's philosophy was based on FreeBSD, yes?

Having been familiar with FreeBSD (and running it both as a server and a desktop at times before), it just felt like the natural transition to make. I was pleasantly surprised to find that KDE4 finally reached the same usability as on Linux, and I haven't really looked back since. The ONLY issue is that I can't also run it on a laptop, unless I don't care about sleep/hibernated. For that reason, my E6400 still runs Arch.

Amen to that. I was mildly irritated when I first saw systemd take over Fedora (I forget what release it was), so I moved to Arch Linux -- which I figured I could count on to be the Unix-like system I always loved and forever adhere to the K.I.S.S. philosophy...then they ALSO shoved systemd down our throats. Have been using FreeBSD on the desktop [where practical] ever since; it was already what I used on my servers.

Can't speak of OpenBSD, but I currently use FreeBSD + KDE4 on my gaming desktop (when I'm not gaming), and it's phenomenal. More stable than Arch Linux ever ran on this machine, but I suppose I can't speak much to performance since pretty much anything should run very well on this beast.

Mother of god I wish I could mod you into infiniti and beyond.

Just curious, whatever became of this?

ZFS immediately came to mind when I read the summary.

So many different possibilities...I mean it's like he purposely left his statement open-ended so as to not specifically deny and guarantee that the shit isn't happening ...oh, wait.

Exactly. Which people who don't think outside the box will see "everything" as "we have nothing to worry about, they only go after terrorists and the ends justify the means". Meanwhile, there is no "official" "authority" that this guy can allude to publicly, most likely because intricate details of exactly what they're collecting and prevention of abuse of the system is "classified", so how would we ever really know? Fuck we wouldn't know shit at all if Snowden didn't have the balls to do what he did. I'd say trust me that this is only the tip of the iceberg with the shit the NSA, etc. has going on, but hey I tend to research and think critically about things, something that is frowned upon and discouraged by tptb.

I struggle with not doing something like you suggest everyday -- the compensation factor you mention is the barrier :/