Oh my god this lady should be running a pet shop. She's had this role since 2005 and is only now dogfooding the software for 10 minutes a day? Stunning and brave.
Imagine Linus Torvalds or Theo from OpenBSD using Windows out of convenience. Unthinkable.
With ~zero unix experience (I was moving from BeOS), I ran FreeBSD full time as a chemistry grad student from 2003-2009, on a Dell XPS, and mostly had no problems. What's changed?
(I'm interested in leaving linux and going to FreeBSD)
I'll never understand why people think this looks human:
What Made This Time Different
This time, I didn't just install FreeBSD.
I created a system for learning and success.
Clear goal: FreeBSD as my daily driver
Daily habit: 10 minutes minimum
Accountability: post the journey on Linkedin
Gee, why not let the agent try FreeBSD for you and do the posting directly
Because those type of people are actually some type of narcissist powerpoint bots. Only interested in their "journey" and putting that next to a picture (of herself probably) climbing a mountain.
Here is what should worry everybody who care about FreeBSD and the "foundation", it seems it is being run into the ground [0]
> The board has said the deficit spending is intentional. They are drawing on reserves to invest more in the project, which makes sense in principle.
> But at roughly the 2024 burn rate, the reserve fund might last about 4 to 5 years.
> One thing that caught my attention is that the EU Cyber Resilience Act starts in September 2026, and the Foundation already has six workstreams running to prepare for it. That kind of work costs money, and right now a lot of it seems to be funded from the same reserves that are shrinking.
This is also why you are hearing thing like FreeBSD "is investing in laptop support" or a KDE installer.
But this is not what is gonna "save" FreeBSD. People get interested and choose FreeBSD because it a great server OS, because of the ZFS support, jails, PF, stability and the coherent system overall.
They would do more for adoption by just making sure most VPS hosting services have it as an option along Linux than wasting infinite money on supporting "laptops".
See also [1], people are getting tired of that level of hypocrisy and waste of money.
As a long time FreeBSD user, the Foundation has really failed to impress me in recent years. I lost faith in them back in 2018 during the "code of conduct" fiasco, when they wasted Foundation funds on a consultant for a code of conduct that nobody really asked for. Haven't donated since -- instead I redirected my donations to the OpenBSD project, which while less practical in many scenarios, is a technically superior product in my eyes.
That said, I am glad to see them focusing their efforts on something useful, like laptop compatibility. Regardless, this is a really dumb post. 10 minutes a day is not "daily driving."
According to [0] (I couldn't verify it to be clear)
> Loren Gurkowski is the daughter of Deb Goodkin.
> Her brother Drew Gurkowski started working for the FreeBSD Foundation as an intern in 2015 and continued as a consultant starting in 2018, until December 2024.
If you founded a company I have no problem hiring yours kids. If you are elected or running a non profit relying on donations, you really have to be shameless to do that.
What is more of a joke is the fact that I remember a time when there were multiple computer companies that designed hardware and software (OS) and actually sold those items to the public 1980s early-late 1990’s all those companies are gone IBM (is but a shadow of its former self), Sun, Digital, Atari, Commodore Amiga, Next, Acorn, and SGI etc… At the time Next and SGI were completely unaffordable dreams when I was young.
For the most part, no one has really picked up the gauntlet since aside from Apple on the desktop as a vertical computer company.
Of course, pieces of the tech still live on notably from Next computers, Acorn (ARM) and SGI.
I wish someone would use Linux as part of being a new vertical computer company OS and hardware on the desktop. Why? Baffling.
I mean I am happy if they kept FreeBSD to be Server focused. I have been using a Mac / Windows and deploying on Linux and FreeBSD, i don't see why both the consumer and the server / enterprise has to have the same OS stack all the time.
Ironically, drm-612-kmod has been pushed to ports a couple days ago (not quarterly yet) so you can now start using FreeBSD with really recent GPUs now from ... let's see ... 2024.
This still makes it like the 3rd operating system overall when it comes to hardware support.
Does anyone know about power consumption? That's where Linux shines for laptops (probably nowadays better than Windows).
(I have some old laptops, and as someone posted the other day the interesting thing about someone having LLM'ed a 802.11 driver, I'd might give it a go.)
FreeBSD does not have a desktop installer yet.. the powerpoint alludes to that being a coming feature though.. I think people here should chill out about her not using FreeBSD as the daily driver.. I use FreeBSD daily in my work, but no, I don't on desktop...
> FreeBSD Foundation's Executive Director has been trying to daily drive FreeBSD on laptops
This sounds like a joke. Imagine if Bill gates said "he's going to try and daily drive Windows", or if Steve Jobs said "he's going to try and daily drive an iPhone".
It seems crazy to me that a foundation behind an OS has executives who don't even use that OS.
Today I learned the FreeBSD Foundation executive does not daily drive FreeBSD on laptop. (Without even opening the article.) This alone looks exceptionally weird for me.
30 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 55.0 ms ] threadImagine Linus Torvalds or Theo from OpenBSD using Windows out of convenience. Unthinkable.
(I'm interested in leaving linux and going to FreeBSD)
homie is saying a lot about themselves and less about FreeBSD
Here is what should worry everybody who care about FreeBSD and the "foundation", it seems it is being run into the ground [0]
> The board has said the deficit spending is intentional. They are drawing on reserves to invest more in the project, which makes sense in principle. > But at roughly the 2024 burn rate, the reserve fund might last about 4 to 5 years.
> One thing that caught my attention is that the EU Cyber Resilience Act starts in September 2026, and the Foundation already has six workstreams running to prepare for it. That kind of work costs money, and right now a lot of it seems to be funded from the same reserves that are shrinking.
This is also why you are hearing thing like FreeBSD "is investing in laptop support" or a KDE installer.
But this is not what is gonna "save" FreeBSD. People get interested and choose FreeBSD because it a great server OS, because of the ZFS support, jails, PF, stability and the coherent system overall.
They would do more for adoption by just making sure most VPS hosting services have it as an option along Linux than wasting infinite money on supporting "laptops".
See also [1], people are getting tired of that level of hypocrisy and waste of money.
- [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1rq0ucy/ive_been_g...
- [1] https://unixdigest.com/articles/hypocrisy-and-politics-in-fr...
Anyone who wrote this has no business with FreeBSD or open source.
That said, I am glad to see them focusing their efforts on something useful, like laptop compatibility. Regardless, this is a really dumb post. 10 minutes a day is not "daily driving."
> Loren Gurkowski is the daughter of Deb Goodkin.
> Her brother Drew Gurkowski started working for the FreeBSD Foundation as an intern in 2015 and continued as a consultant starting in 2018, until December 2024.
If you founded a company I have no problem hiring yours kids. If you are elected or running a non profit relying on donations, you really have to be shameless to do that.
- [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1rq0ucy/comment/o9...
lol. That’s not the definition of a daily driver. Thats something I really don’t want to do, like pushups.
For the most part, no one has really picked up the gauntlet since aside from Apple on the desktop as a vertical computer company.
Of course, pieces of the tech still live on notably from Next computers, Acorn (ARM) and SGI.
I wish someone would use Linux as part of being a new vertical computer company OS and hardware on the desktop. Why? Baffling.
This still makes it like the 3rd operating system overall when it comes to hardware support.
(I have some old laptops, and as someone posted the other day the interesting thing about someone having LLM'ed a 802.11 driver, I'd might give it a go.)
This sounds like a joke. Imagine if Bill gates said "he's going to try and daily drive Windows", or if Steve Jobs said "he's going to try and daily drive an iPhone".
It seems crazy to me that a foundation behind an OS has executives who don't even use that OS.
> at least 10 minutes a day.
> 10 minutes a day.
this is a story? and she can only handle dogfooding her product in sub 1 hour intervals?