I think people are looking for new alternatives to tinker with. Linux is becoming new Windows and BSDs new Linux. I dunno what is Windows becoming, but it ain't good.
Generally people get more excited any time a major release of anything comes out. But FWIW HN has always had favorable front paging for anything related to FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
Not disagreeing, but if the release was a few months ago, then the poster is quite correct - there is a recent "surge" of FreeBSD related posts. And these are not quite ... how shall I word it somewhat nicely ... not quite as fascinating to, say, a wider linux community as such. With that I don't mean "because we use linux, we are snobs", but that what the FreeBSD guys talk about, seems a little bit ... outdated. The heavy use of shell scripts for instance in this post here - I never understood that focus on shell scripts in general, including on Linux. I transitioned into using ruby (or python, but mostly ruby) to replace all shell script needs a long time ago. Every time I am assumed to have to write a shell script I wonder why I would want to cripple myself when I can use a better programming language instead. Many of these shown "innovations" are also not really groundbreaking. To me it seems as if there is a distinct lack of FreeBSD users out there compared to Linux users. As a consequence Linux simply has a lot more information and news (a lot of which is also low quality of course; I am not saying it is all pancakes and sunflowers in the Linux ecosystem either).
The heavy use of shell scripts for instance in this post here...
There's exactly one in the post. It's ten non-blank/non-comment lines, and the author says of it
This is not well designed but it gets the job done.
My least favorite thing to see in the world is a Ruby, (worse) Python, or (much worse) Go program that could have been a very simple shell script.
When my sysadmin programs get more complicated, I reach for something more suited (like Erlang), but if the shell script is simple and only has deps on other standalone programs, then I write a shell program.
No conspiracy, I think it just happens. One person posts something, maybe someone else reads it and gets into a rabbit hole on a topic, or maybe someone sees an opportunity to throw more conversation pieces at something hot.
Comments
Why sudden surge of FreeBSD-related posts?
Did anything special or new happened on FreeBSD land?
I think people are looking for new alternatives to tinker with. Linux is becoming new Windows and BSDs new Linux. I dunno what is Windows becoming, but it ain't good.
Can you elaborate?
systemd. snaps. rust coreutils.
15.0 was released a couple months ago, hence the title.
We have three (including this) FreeBSD posts in the past two days.
Back to FreeBSD: Part 1 (hypha.pub) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47108989
Linuxulator on FreeBSD Feels Like Magic (hayzam.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47113527
Generally people get more excited any time a major release of anything comes out. But FWIW HN has always had favorable front paging for anything related to FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
Not disagreeing, but if the release was a few months ago, then the poster is quite correct - there is a recent "surge" of FreeBSD related posts. And these are not quite ... how shall I word it somewhat nicely ... not quite as fascinating to, say, a wider linux community as such. With that I don't mean "because we use linux, we are snobs", but that what the FreeBSD guys talk about, seems a little bit ... outdated. The heavy use of shell scripts for instance in this post here - I never understood that focus on shell scripts in general, including on Linux. I transitioned into using ruby (or python, but mostly ruby) to replace all shell script needs a long time ago. Every time I am assumed to have to write a shell script I wonder why I would want to cripple myself when I can use a better programming language instead. Many of these shown "innovations" are also not really groundbreaking. To me it seems as if there is a distinct lack of FreeBSD users out there compared to Linux users. As a consequence Linux simply has a lot more information and news (a lot of which is also low quality of course; I am not saying it is all pancakes and sunflowers in the Linux ecosystem either).
There's exactly one in the post. It's ten non-blank/non-comment lines, and the author says of it
My least favorite thing to see in the world is a Ruby, (worse) Python, or (much worse) Go program that could have been a very simple shell script.When my sysadmin programs get more complicated, I reach for something more suited (like Erlang), but if the shell script is simple and only has deps on other standalone programs, then I write a shell program.
No conspiracy, I think it just happens. One person posts something, maybe someone else reads it and gets into a rabbit hole on a topic, or maybe someone sees an opportunity to throw more conversation pieces at something hot.
Perhaps the initial posts spurred reader interest in FreeBSD which then spurred further posts?
FreeBSD is great - good to see it get positive "airtime."
I was wondering the same.