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Comment What not to use (Score 1) 267

While I think that most of the posts to use FreeBSD or PC-BSD are spot on, I think I should cover what you shouldn't use in the BSD world due to your requirements.

My own os, MidnightBSD, does not have virtualbox. The nvidia binary drivers work from FreeBSD on it, but that won't be the case forever.
MirBSD wouldn't support at lot of the software you mentioned and doesn't have recent java support for minecraft.
OpenBSD might work, but you would have to check on a few packages.
NetBSD is probably your next best bet after FreeBSD due to the wide variety of packages.
DragonFly is weak on packages, although they're working on it.

FreeBSD does offer disk encryption. Note if you use encrypted swap, there is a massive performance hit. I used to have this a default in MidnightBSD up to 0.4 and it was not a pretty picture on server hardware. Sometimes you'd get panics if there was too much swap pressure with it.

Comment Re:Lovin' that smell of BIAS (Score 1) 226

The problem with a bootcamp is that it doesn't teach theory. You get a good jumpstart on current tech, but if that person doesn't keep learning they won't stay current and in ten years won't have a job anymore.

People who take shortcuts often aren't willing to put the time in later to keep learning.

You get two things out of a CS program in college:
1. You learn how to learn new things including languages quickly.
2. You learn theory so that you understand how to write efficient, reliable and maintainable code.

You don't have to know big O notation to understand that a nested for loop is less performant than a hash lookup, but I guarantee these boot camps don't teach that.

I started as a self taught programmer and then went to college later. There was a LOT of value in doing that.

Comment Re:One of the worst points about systemd (Score 2) 522

> Seriously, what do people want? That nothing must be using Linux specific kernel features ever, because that is unfair to other OS's?

No, what we want is for systemd to not be forced on us as a way to destroy any chance of running a graphical environment in the future. Wayland compositors, GNOME and various other things are starting to require systemd. That is why everyone is upset. Linux users may also not like systemd and that is another issue.

The forced nature of systemd means that every linux distro must switch and that *BSD people may have to fork X or wayland (if it takes off) in the future in order to have a damn GUI.

Comment Preaching to the choir (Score 2) 232

I work at a large university. IT gave us two options for operating systems on our servers, Redhat or Windows. They also offer a DIY vmware setup. Rather than having IT manage our servers, I have to do it just so we can run Ubuntu. It is impossible to run certain packages like OpenCPU on Redhat because no one ever bothered to port it. Before you jump to the conclusion that linux is linux, it's really not. You can blame Ubuntu for going off the beaten path or Redhat for not keeping up with the times but some software packages only run on one linux distro without considerable effort. Conversely, the only supported backup solution for our servers is IBM tivoli crap and I went through hell to convert the rpm based installer into something that would work on Ubuntu LTS. IBM doesn't get that Ubuntu (or debian derived) distros are popular now either.

As a *BSD guy, I find both Ubuntu and Redhat irritating but at least ubuntu has apt-get. Funny thing is I started on Redhat 5.0 in '99 or so as my first *nix like os. Back then they had a desktop that didn't suck though.

Comment Still a member (Score 1) 213

I agree with a lot of the comments here about how it's got declining value. I usually catch up on issues during vacation each year and it's always enjoyable to read some RMS or PHK rant. That said, it's not really worth the $100 for the digital library on top of the yearly dues. I only have it at this point because some of the old content is helpful when working on my hobby.

Comment It's not just the OS (Score 1) 281

Most people are blaming Apple directly for iOS getting slow with new releases. I've seen that in some cases with built in apps, but the real problem is usually third party apps. Developers by the latest and greatest iPad and iPhones and then they target those with their apps. The apps get big and have memory usage issues and start crashing on older devices. Usually toward the end of my contract I start having problems with twitter/facebook/google apps crashing a lot and many others that regularly receive updates. My contact timeline usually falls a few months after a new major number iPhone release. I've noticed people on the "s" releases tend to have less issues between hardware upgrades too.

Comment Re:Modern Weak Languages (Score 2) 283

That and the Perl community is good about taking upstream patches, has CPAN and a faster, cleaner implementation. Ignoring syntax, Python's got some ugly code in the implementation and it's touchy and irritating to port.

I actually got into Perl because I tried to port Python and Ruby. When you see what's under the hood, it really makes you love Perl. I've migrated from PHP to Perl for scripts and web stuff in the last few years and I find it much less frustrating. The problem is no longer how am i going to get this to work, but which CPAN module do I want to use to do it.

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