Daily operating system rotation
Sometimes one gets drawn to really bad ideas. Thoughts may occur, which one know are so silly that the best action would be to forget all about them and move on to instead do something better. Still these bad ideas have something too compelling to them, making it impossible to not feel like pursuing them. I've acted on one such thing now. This is the blog post about it.
Lets start with some background. A few years back I found myself to be stuck in a monoculture. Monocultures as such are typically always a bad thing. Still this was one which I had actively chosen, and once upon a time decided to go all in on. Yet the world tends to change around you, and suddenly you might find what was previously your favorite spot to later be an undesired place. The monoculture in question was Debian Linux. An operating system I then ran on all my computers. Servers, laptops, embedded stuff, everything. For a couple of decades I practically used nothing else. At least not where I could make that choice. It's ironic how I could end up with essentially all eggs in one operating system basket, given my previous experience with and love for more diverse environments.
Now what's written in the previous paragraph is not 100% factual, but it feels true. During the period described I have e.g. been doing software development on both OpenWRT and illumos based systems for customers, and I installed and ran bitrig on a personal laptop for quite a while when that was a thing. I have transitioned into using FreeBSD on both my primary laptop and on servers during the last couple of years. That feels a lot better than Debian. Still, am I perhaps just replacing one monoculture with another? Realizing that I have, not all with working batteries but in total, about seven laptops of varying age I am now trying an insane experiment. Once a day I am switching which operating system to use.
Unless I have tasks that require to be done one a certain system, I attempt to every morning pick the laptop installed with that weekday's operating system. Thus my goal is to run FreeBSD on Mondays, Alpine Linux on Tuesdays, OpenIndiana on Wednesdays, OpenBSD on Thursdays, Darwin on Fridays and Haiku on Sundays. Saturdays are left open for playing around with toy operating systems, or more mature ones, in virtual machines. My aim is to do this for something three to six months or so. Maybe slightly shorter, maybe longer, but definitely not perpetually. I'm not sure exactly what happens after that. I am hoping to learn how to use computers in a more abstract manner, reducing my tendency to unnecessarily make use of too implementation specific details. My expection is to land in perhaps becoming better in selecting platforms suitable for their task. Though any kind of valuable insights are welcome.
Some people who know me might have been shocked to read about my choice for Fridays. Darwin practically means macOS, and that will without doubt be the most challenging part of this experiment. Apple are quite keen on taking away control from users. I am annoyed with that experience already, but hope I will learn something and come out stronger.