Its not a bad idea if you agree with the aim - Linux already has lots of hardware support and an ecosystem to leverage.
In the long run BSDs and non-systemd Linux will be more similar to each other than they are to Linux with systemd in a lot of ways.
I have started using Alpine for servers - its small and fast. Not so sure about switching on desktops.
It vaguely reminds me of people arguing about "what color is your function". You open that portal and end up in a new universe. All or nothing.
The unix wars are long over I'm not sure what you can point to that ever was a True Unix. Nostalgia not withstanding. What well defined standard Right Way you're actually clinging to is not clear.
Whether it will end up for the best or not I don't know but the entire saga seems to be the pitfalls of endless tinkering on display rather than some unifying vision. I wish we lived in a world where systemd type efforts had clear end goals and well thought out architecture in mind when they start but open source doesn't like working this way.
It just ends up as "my favorite way of doing things is better" based on vibes. In both directions. That's the problem with "philosophies".
The best argument I have seen for systemd is that it adds a layer that will be used and standardised across multiple distros (most effectively in a video of a talk by a FreeBSD developer). The best argument against is that it is massive and does too much.
Like Google Play Services on Android.
I've been using it for years. It's the successor to slack for me. Not a fan of rolling release and prefer minimalism to Devuan's approach. Void looks interesting but I had issues, whereas I had none with Alpine. I recommend it.
It's fine. I've run it on laptops (IIRC, it does have the small downside of not sleeping on lid close by default) and my desktop (my gaming machine for a while; flatpak Steam runs nicely on Alpine) and it's fine.
I'm curious about "fast" here, as for "small" I don't care much - you mean benchmarks doing better on Alpine or fast in which terms?
Still, somehow, on the margin, I feel I'd be more comfortable hopping back into a much earlier OpenBSD than a much earlier Debian. Maybe it's a taste thing.
Since OpenBSD's purpose is to make one of the most secure UNIX platforms that's where they generally break things. They also anticipate security holes related to speculative execution like disabling hyperthreading.
That does sound like a dream come true; how does one end up in such a gig?
> If only there were a freely-usable set of Unix-like operating systems, with an emphasis on keeping things very, very stable over releases, even more stable than Debian does. Enter the BSDs. Free, Open, Net, take your pick. All of them take a “don’t fix it if it ain’t broken” approach to things, which means someone who started slinging NetBSD installs back in 2007 can probably spin up a well-manicured VM of that 2007 install and reliably make their way around the system, even today, in 2024.
I dearly love all the major BSDs, but that... isn't the argument I would make for OpenBSD, which is quite happy to break things to improve them. For example, replacing sudo with doas - excellent move, but if you go back multiple versions your knowledge no longer works, much like Debian.
(If I were making suggestions, I tend to feel that NetBSD has largely not yet realized it isn't a barely-forked UNIX running on a VAX; it feels much more unchanging to me, at least from a user perspective, though perhaps I merely lack the experience to know better.)