Motivations

Before diving into FreeBSD installation and use, let me clarify what I mean by a “Just Focus” laptop. I also want to share my motivations for building that laptop on FreeBSD. I wanted a computing environment that would, crucially, let me “Just Focus.”

The “Just Focus” Laptop’s Motivation

At this point in my life, I really want to focus on output – mostly because the world of late-stage capitalism is providing such absolute garbage for input. Even curated down to only excellent stuff, it’s still passive. In the few hours that remain after (trying) to be a good father, husband, and colleague, I need to focus on the output that nourishes me. My half-wit blog posts from 20 years ago still have memories and insights upon re-read – where did all the value of my also watching prestige TV go? I want the algorithms and the AI and the TV and the seduction to back off so that I can do the output work that nourishes me, enriches me, and actually leaves something behind to be remembered by.

But I’m human. I’d rather watch popcorn movies and I get seduced by YouTube shorts about movies I love or life in far-away countries. So I need to build a mental dojo that helps me achieve what my brain knows is good for me – even if that’s against what my id tells me I want to do.

I want a device that has minimal distractions; it isn’t pretty; it can’t serve 1080p, beautiful visual experiences of death-rictus reaction videos to Marvel teasers, etc. This device is optimized for reading PDFs, books, working with code, or publishing my stuff. It is calm in its aesthetic and reliable in its function. You and your brain know: when you’re here, you’re nourishing yourself: highest-quality inputs or creativity. This is the essence of a “Just Focus” laptop.

You don’t fiddle with it. You don’t tune it. You don’t get distracted on it. On top of that, it doesn’t break. For technologists, we work with broken systems and software all day, every day. This device is a boring mental space of reliability and peace.

The “Just Focus” Laptop’s Success Criteria

It will:

• Function primarily as a distraction-free, terminal-oriented workspace for writing, coding, and thinking. To be clear, it should prioritize working in the bare Unix terminal without loading a display manager like Xorg. Big black screen, legible fonts, no YouTube a dangerous “Open New Tab” away
• Support graphical applications when needed (browser, PDF reader). These devices should make it easy to install recent versions of any software I might need, but don’t force me to buy into a whole desktop experience. Graphical experience should remain fast and streamlined like vim, tmux or mouse-free desktop window managers
• Offer middle-age-friendly font sizes and readability so I don’t have to get my glasses in order to use it
• Minimize maintenance overhead and decrease likelihood that I will break the system irrecoverably
• Avoid monoculture risk: I was attracted to Linux and Apple in the 90’s in part because they served to bring different ideas of what computing could look like (e.g.: Gnome in 1999, Enlightenment 18 in 2000. Epic). Monocultures are dangerous in nature and in any critical system. It’s good to have multiple alternatives available. And it’s not enough to merely have Apple as a Pepsi to Microsoft’s Coke. Sometimes an entire sector – all the combatants – see something too good for any of them to resist. Consider AI integration: if X goes for deep OS integration shared with a paying “AI partner” (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, et al), Y will have to do the same. Capitalism’s and their respective boards’ expectations will require them all to undermine your experience, fire off AI-Clippy pop ups left and right to keep up with their peers; your experience of your thought partner, your computer, will enshittify. If both Coke and Pepsi start doing something awful, wouldn’t it be nice to find that there’s been a carefully-maintained, loved third option (a Dr Peppper, so to speak)?

So, Why Not Linux, Nerd?

Initially I did achieve a “Just Focus” laptop with minimalist Linux distributions.

It went like this.

Ubuntu MATE provided a simplified but still pretty whiz-bangy desktop. But if you’re not going to use the desktop and whiz-bang, why not strip down to…

AntiX? Built on Debian, AntiX offered impressive performance on older hardware. I really liked their punk/DIY philosophy which sees open source and getting a longer useable lifetime out of computers as a component of their punk/anti-capitalist/anti-fascist/pro-environment worldview.¹

But Debian has adopted some technologies that AntiX’s leadership disagrees with. Presently, they take Debian and remove one subsystem and swap in an elder subsystem. That means that they’re going to be fighting their own roots. On the day the AntiX developers stop maintaining it, AntiX’s users may find themselves unable to “Just Focus” as they undertake a technical migration effort. That nagged at me.

At this point, AntiX represents a “slower-moving, Unix-like system that privileges security, stability and conservative adherence to legacy Unix OS design approaches.” That pretty much matched what I knew of FreeBSD last November. I suppose my hesitancy to try it out was fear of having to learn the OS quirks of yet another system after Windows, MacOS, and Linux had been badgering me for years.

My colleague Ray got me interested in the “Changelog” podcast and, in particular, a wonderful interview (2024-01-17’s “Changelog” podcast) with FreeBSD project leader Allan Jude that convinced me to “Just try it.”

Jude’s Excellent Argument for FreeBSD

So, what was it that Jude said that convinced me to rebuild the “Just Focus” laptop on FreeBSD? Without ego or zealotry, Jude articulated a vision of operating system design that resonated deeply with my goals. Several aspects of FreeBSD’s design philosophy stood out:

Unified Design vs. Fragmented Components

In the GNU/Linux world, the kernel and user programs (“userspace”) are developed separately. This separation can lead to integration issues, where kernel changes might break userspace applications. Or perhaps one application you need needs version 1.x of a library and another needs 1.y. Since there’s no institution coordinating which version will be available on the OS, there’s a lot of possibility for distraction (the opposite of the “Just Focus” philosophy) as one attends to these discrepancies. FreeBSD takes a different approach: the kernel and applications are built against the same libraries, allowing them to leverage each other seamlessly.

This unified approach results in a more predictable and learnable system, where updates are less likely to create cascading compatibility problems. For someone seeking to minimize maintenance headaches, this was immediately appealing.

Educationally, it also means that if you ever see a function in the kernel source that seems useful, but you can’t figure out quite how to use it, you can look at the applications’ source code that come with the installation and find an example. It’s a really educational, especially when you’re looking at battle-tested code written by experienced hands.

Built-in Data Management Robustness

FreeBSD’s has multiple features designed to protect your data: the directory layout, the ZFS filesystem, and boot environments. Together, these technologies all help to keep your system running/readily recoverable and protect your personal (versus operating system) data safe.

• Snapshots: The ZFS filesystem (which governs how bytes are written to disk without getting corrupted) provides the ability to capture disk state; that is, they let you make a “snapshot” of the disk. Run it on a regular basis (or run it automatically, better yet), and you have backups on a user-friendliness level comparable to Mac OSX’s “Time Machine.” About to do a programming thing or an OS upgrade that might go wrong? Take a snapshot. If things go off the rails, one command can put you back to the way you were
• Boot Environment Management: The boot environment can be preserved before major changes, allowing easy rollback if something breaks. This was a specific case Jude called out that if he breaks his system right before doing a demo, he can reboot into a “last known working image” easily and then debug the buggy profile later – no stress
• Clean Directory Hierarchy Separation: System files and user data remain clearly delineated, making upgrades safer. Additionally, system files added after the initial installation are located in directories that contain the keyword /local so that your configuration adjustments or overrides are easily located, edited, or retired as system upgrades occur

I’ve dodged upgrade-nagging from my OS for years because I feared data corruption. I’ve had to recover broken installations with data loss and recovery from backup disk. The promise of integrated snapshot and boot management was compelling for letting me keep my focus and not have to engage in tangential IT work.

Documentation and Transparency

The FreeBSD project is renowned for its documentation quality. The FreeBSD Handbook stands as one of the most comprehensive and clearly written technical guides in the open-source world. Not only this, but there’s an excellent Developer’s Handbook that helps those who would go deeper into designing the operating system. Additional folklore held, and my experience confirmed, that the on-board electronic documentation, man pages, were written with great care and thoughtfulness in terms of approachability and readability. I can, and subsequent posts will confirm, attest to this. A sample: the hier(7) page documents why the directory layout is the way it is, why some things are in one place (e.g. “to keep system concerns separate from user concerns”) versus others, etc. The pages don’t just document “how to run a program” but “here’s our mental model for building this thing.”

At the human level, I’d also heard that the FreeBSD community was remarkably collaborative, interested in solutions over egos, and humble. Jude showed this in heaps. I’ll take more of that, and my experience in the upcoming posts attests to it. Look, I know I’m a brighter-than-average and more experienced than average guy when it comes to computers, but so many communities seem hell-bent on denying that what you are doing is often quite hard. Jude showed and others have emulated the reverse and have been exceedingly charitable. That’s an exception that I want to be a part of.

Back to technical merits, FreeBSD’s focus on clarity extends to the system’s internal operations. FreeBSD uses straightforward rc scripts (well-constructed Bourne shell scripts, which AntiX is hacking back into rc-abandoning Debian) rather than the more opaque systemd. I have no idea how to debug systemd, but I do know how to step through and get the gist of a shell script.

Taken in total, this transparency, friendliness, humility, and respect for technical writing is invaluable. With an investment in learning C and shell scripting, you can truly know and understand the OS, your OS. It was a potent proposition.

Nostalgia and Professional Resonance

I’ll admit to a touch of nostalgia influencing my choice. Having worked with Solaris (a BSD-based Unix) as a sysadmin earlier in my career, FreeBSD’s directory layout, log files and locations, and UI felt familiar. I knew where the logfiles were by instinct and some commands shot out my fingers before I could consciously think of them.

Additionally, the prospect of running the classic Common Desktop Environment (CDE) with its calm pastel aesthetic was an unexpected – but Just Focus-aligned – bonus (I gladly donated to the NsCDE project when I got it running).

Governance and Community Considerations

While technical features and the governance of FreeBSD made it a compelling platform for my “Just Focus” plan, I’d be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that governance and community aspects played a role in my decision to explore an alternative to GNU/Linux.

I’ll be glad to avoid the frothy-mouthed, soap opera quality of conflicts in GNU/Linux.² And while I am unendingly thankful to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU project for establishing a non-commercial computing bulwark against monopolies, and while I respect that their luminaries spotted the dangers of computation i.e. thought being owned by monopolies, I do think some of their leadership decisions have not suited the niche of being a small mammal in the world of dinosaurs particularly well. The FSF are still litigating whether a laptop is “Free” when some piddly program on it has the wrong license. Meanwhile terabytes of data are being uploaded from closed-sourced apps on closed-source platforms to closed source clouds. Their heads are not in the now.

Lastly, and I’ll say as little about this as I can, some of the leadership of the FSF has displayed an idealistic support of “Free Speech” to the degree that they forebear their key luminary’s public musings from some of the ickier puddles outside the Overton window on the topic of (ew) adult/minor sexual relationships. There are places where those things can be discussed with nuance and delicacy; and maybe there are more of them than the courts or psychiatric societies; but I’m pretty sure technical mailing lists are not the right venues. It’s regressive to progress of the FSF and, uh, gross.³ As Reagan once observed: when you’re explaining, you’re losing. FSF finds itself tied up in a lot of explaining that’s just unnecessary.

The Decision Point

Ultimately, choosing FreeBSD was about finding a pragmatic operating system that treated focus as a first-class goal. I wanted a system that would:

• Stay out of my way most of the time
• Minimize surprises and interruptions, new payment models, etc.
• Reward deeper understanding
• Last for years without major upheaval

FreeBSD promised all of these things.

In my next post, I’ll detail the practical steps I took to install and configure FreeBSD on my decade-old laptop—a process that was educational, occasionally frustrating, but ultimately rewarding.

Footnotes

1. There’s always been a bit of an interesting dynamic between “tattooed bassists in DC hardcore bands who want to stop the Reaganite fascist menace” and open source idealists who will correct you if you don’t call it GNU/Linux (“It’s pronounced GNU/Linux. GNU is the userland but Linux is but one kernel of many.”). Having met members of both sets, they intersect quite often on topics related to veganism, polyamory, the difference between Free as in gratis versus Free as in will, and the finer points of the latest edition of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rule book. Debian is more closely associated with the latter. But it’s no surprise that their Black Flag-adoring peers would take Debian as the starting point. What’s even more interesting is how both of those groups are finding fellowship with rural farmers who are unable to legally repair their tractor or have to worry about being sued into bankruptcy when Mother Nature germinates a seed of Monsanto’s private wheat in their field when they don’t have a license. I, for one, welcome the revolution of the Farmcore-GNUists
2. Recent Soap Opera Plots: systemd versus rc script; “ZOMG is Linus going to let Rust computer language code into the kernel?!?”; Future security updates will now require a subscription fee, etc.
3. NPR article – readers can come to their own conclusions on this

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