So... yesterday didn't go quite as planned, exactly—

Truth be told, I didn't even touch the worldbuilding.

...and what I did do didn't go quite right either. I tried (and failed) to install a few OSes on my old Compute Stick, but that thing never works quite right regardless, so that was to be expected.

I definitely didn't expect OpenBSD to work out of the box — an OS that puts a blurb about wireless firmware on the main download page knows that they don't exactly have an excess of ease of use. That's alright though, it's a server OS, and I bet if I was installing it on a real PC with a real internet connection (Ethernet, not WiFi), it would have gone better.

Next, I tried Debian: the Daily netinst image, with an eye to configuring Debian Testing (or perhaps Unstable if I'd felt so inclined). The thing, though, is that Debian always has firmware issues. "Only free and open-source by default" also means that a bunch of the components of your system Just Don't Work out of the box 99% of the time. That's okay, though!, you might say, for there is an extensive firmware package! ...Yes, but... ...that needs to be loaded in the installer to work. And that requires mounting an extra volume off of a USB device, and the Compute Stick simply refused to do that, for some reason. ...the Debian installer running on it, I mean. In an OS it's fine, but when it's a netinstall image... I can't really just install and then load the firmware. Boo. :(

Finally, I tried Alpine Linux. To put it briefly, it works, but it's a little obtuse and alien. It's systemd-free, so obviously it will feel a little different in some key aspects, but... somehow, it doesn't seem quite right.

So where does this leave us? Well...

Funnily enough, the most intuitive OS I've tried within the last month or so is actually FreeBSD! Shockingly, despite being technically even less related to the Linux mainstreams than something like Alpine, it feels extremely familiar, the startup and shutdown is beautifully verbose, even the damn TTY scales 2x if the resolution is high — it's marvelous. The software selection is stunningly diverse by default, and the Ports system is second probably only to the AUR itself.

If I ever set up a server for some reason, or perhaps even something slightly embedded(?) (more on that later), I think I might just go with FreeBSD. Oh, and the WiFi Just Works out of the box. It's lovely.

So yeah, I'll see what I can do in terms of worldbuilding..... soon™. And until then, I have other things to keep myself busy. I think I ought to get to work on that design pass for a friend's character... either way. Avery out :3