> Culture matters too. One reason I stepped away from Linux was the noise, the debates that drowned out the joy of building.

No clue what he is babbling about. LFS/BLFS is active. FreeBSD doesn't have that. I am sorry but Linux is the better tinker-toy. I understand this upsets the BSD folks, but it is simply how it is. Granted, systemd and the corporatification took a huge toll into the Linux ecosystem but even now as it is in some ruins (KDE devs recently decreed that xorg will die and they will aid in the process of killing off xorg, by forcing everyone into wayland), it is still much more active as a tinker-toy. That's simply how it is.

I recall many years ago NetBSD on the mailing list pointed out that Linux now runs on more toasters than NetBSD. This is simply the power of tinkerification.

> Please keep FreeBSD the kind of place where thoughtful engineering is welcome without ego battles

K - for the three or four users worldwide.

> There’s also the practical side: keep the doors open with hardware vendors like Dell and HPE, so FreeBSD remains a first-class citizen.

Except that Linux supports more hardware. I am sorry FreeBSD people - there is reality. We can't offset and ignore it.

> My hope is simple: that you stay different. Not in the way that shouts for attention, but in the way that earns trust.

TempleOS also exists.

I think it is much more different than any of the BSDs.

> If someone wants hype or the latest shiny thing every month, they have Linux.

Right - and you don't have to go that route either. Imagine there is choice on Linux. I can run Linux without systemd - there is no problem with that. I don't need GNOME or KDE asking-for-donation begging devs killing xorg either. (Admittedly GTK and QT seem to be the only really surviving oldschool desktop GUIs and GTK is really unusuable nowadays.)

> the way the best of Unix always did, they should know they can find it here.

Yeah ok ... 500 out of 500 supercomputers running Linux ...

> And maybe, one day, someone will walk past a rack of servers, hear the steady, unhurried rhythm of a FreeBSD system still running

I used FreeBSD for a while until a certain event made me go back to Linux - my computer was shut off when I returned home. When I left, it was still turned on. It ran FreeBSD. This is of course episodical, but I never had that problem with Linux.

I think FreeBSD folks need to realise that Linux did some things better.

> Yeah ok ... 500 out of 500 supercomputers running Linux ...

So what? Big whoop.