... But also when computers wouldn't do anything useful unless you pressed a button. Or a bunch of buttons, more likely.
It was actually ethereal.
The way you describe FreeBSD is how I imagine an OS should be. I'm going to make it a goal this year to get a server up and running. Thanks.
-- Rant
Linux gives me more inferiority complex than any other technology I've ever touched.
Sure, something like a database system, or a moderately large code base or framework is complicated, and intimidating, and it might take many years to get a grip on, and understand, let alone master. But Linux? I just don't get it. I've tried for years, read books about it, etc. etc.
But in the end it's voodoo to me, and I'm always left searching for answers to problems, unable to solve them myself. The answers are always just rote step-by-step; do this and copy this command, problem solved. Why? how? nothing makes sense!!!
I always have the sense that somewhere out there is the holy bible of Linux, the missing piece of the puzzle; read this and it will all make sense.
Admittedly I've never compiled a distro. So in some respect I'm guilty of not going into the deep end. I suspect that if I learnt systems programming, and really go into the thick of it... then somewhere I might start to find my feet.
But it's easier to just believe that I'm stupid, and Linux is beyond my ability to comprehend.
This will give you an overall theoretical idea of how things are laid out - but you have to realise that every new version of something, there's some developer somewhere who wants to exercise their creativity and make something really clever and cool (to them), so it probably won't make any sense to you after the upgrade. That's the point you realise you're on the eternal treadmill of trying to keep your system doing what you need it to do, without freezing in the vulnerabilities.
Linux is a sprawling metropolis, you have everything and its opposite - a lot of it won't make any sense unless you learn who built what, when, and why; and you can have dirty slums right next to well-designed skyscrapers.
Trying to find meaning in such a thing is fundamentally a fool's errand.
I had a fun experience playing with `grml-debootstrap', GRML¹ being a command-line-oriented LiveCD built upon Debian. Once you’ve booted up, that app installs a minimal Debian instance on your computer. I haven't tried using the stock Debian `debootstrap' utility.
If you just need a plain system to drop a statically linked binary onto, Debian minimal install is perfectly usable right out of the box, and (IIRC) ships fewer components than OpenBSD.
Pros: htop only fills half of your terminal, and you know exactly what each process does because you put them there. A few well-written man pages are the complete documentation of the system. The whole thing is run by a handful of shell scripts.
Cons: exactly the same text, but read with a different tone.