Linux

Considering my career since, it’s surprising to think that the first *nix-like OS I used in anger was not some flavour of Linux. Instead it was FreeBSD. As such, I’ve always had a fondness for it despite the fact I haven’t actually used it since. So when I was looking for a little project to pass the time, I thought “Why not port DistroD to FreeBSD?” That’s when reality finally met my rose-tinted glasses.

Browsing the HackerNews thread on a recent article criticising Apple keyboards, I was amused by a common discussion that always crops up on a subject like this: is Linux a viable alternative to Mac OS? To which the answer is always the same: no. But why is that?

As part of my work on my custom Linux distribution, I needed an application that: had a graphical user interface, listed a set of keyboard layouts, applied them when changed, used low-level X components only. A very simple set of requirements. And yet, I couldn’t find anything. Most of them are tied to a specific desktop environment, like GNOME or KDE. Or they use their own complex components, like iBus. I knew about xkb but everything I’d used was either CLI-only or were static graphical views.

Linux is the best alternative if you’re not running one of Windows or Mac OS, the two big juggernauts of the desktop OS world. There are a huge number of distributions that cover a range of use cases. But none really hit the sweet spot for me, so I built my own.