Well, "sluggish" and "bloated" is a relative term.
Compared to a lean window manager like FVWM or a lightweight desktop like LXQT, it is.
Compared to Microsoft Windows (Microsoft and KDE have been riffing off each other UI-wise for years), it looks like an underfed supermodel.
At the end of the day, the desktop has to work the way _you_ need it to… and do the things _you_ need. Some are able to make BSD work very well for what they do, and that's great and should be encouraged.
Not familiar with GhostBSD but if you've got what you need working well in it, that's fantastic. Wikipedia tells me the underlying kernel is FreeBSD. Like Linux, the modern versions of this (and sadly OpenBSD) have some slop in them, but aside from that they are fine operating systems.
I recently gave NetBSD a spin, and while there is some promise, I'm struggling with getting my Yubikey going in OpenPGP mode (which I _do_ need) and it looks like the Bluetooth audio support lags far behind what's in Linux (the docs seemed to suggest it solely supports the 8kHz mono CVSD audio CODEC… forget HiFi sound… but maybe the docs are out of date, not sure).
That said, I definitely should look at running more of my servers on NetBSD… starting with migrating the OpenBSD ones initially.
Stuart Longland (VK4MSL)
npub12n…d9dex
2026-07-23 00:02:34 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…7ppy
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npub12n5weher8thl0qlj398tvw2rmwpr33z8j443lpg28xyuzkef9dksnd9dexPublished at
2026-07-23 00:02:34 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "Well, \"sluggish\" and \"bloated\" is a relative term.\n\nCompared to a lean window manager like FVWM or a lightweight desktop like LXQT, it is.\n\nCompared to Microsoft Windows (Microsoft and KDE have been riffing off each other UI-wise for years), it looks like an underfed supermodel.\n\nAt the end of the day, the desktop has to work the way _you_ need it to… and do the things _you_ need. Some are able to make BSD work very well for what they do, and that's great and should be encouraged.\n\nNot familiar with GhostBSD but if you've got what you need working well in it, that's fantastic. Wikipedia tells me the underlying kernel is FreeBSD. Like Linux, the modern versions of this (and sadly OpenBSD) have some slop in them, but aside from that they are fine operating systems.\n\nI recently gave NetBSD a spin, and while there is some promise, I'm struggling with getting my Yubikey going in OpenPGP mode (which I _do_ need) and it looks like the Bluetooth audio support lags far behind what's in Linux (the docs seemed to suggest it solely supports the 8kHz mono CVSD audio CODEC… forget HiFi sound… but maybe the docs are out of date, not sure).\n\nThat said, I definitely should look at running more of my servers on NetBSD… starting with migrating the OpenBSD ones initially.",
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