[IdOp]

Originally Posted by Sensucht94

Thank you too for having taken the time to write this Wow, that's disheartening, be it luck or not, it must have felt frustrating

Thanks, I'd say for me it was not disheartening. When something like that happens, it's a little surprising (after all, most things do work well), and sometimes a bit frustrating. But I also tend to try installing all 3 OS's every time I get a new piece of old hardware, just to see how things work. If there is a problem, it will affect what I do with that machine, but life goes on. Overall, I like NetBSD and OpenBSD in many ways, and am persistent. For example, the i915 problem is on my main desktop; so the X graphics slows down and moving a window becomes "shaggy". It's not that critical and I kept using NetBSD despite that. In the last half year or so I had to stop using NetBSD due to other factors (some of which were due to me), but now those seem to be resolved. So I will need to start again from point zero, sort out what to do and take time to do it.

Sure, perhaps a survey on the entire userbase attending BSD fora, mailing lists and IRC might make any sense but that way they just remain practically insignificant case reports

In principle a lot of individual anecdotes could hold significant data. But there are so many factors to sort out. To mention a few ... more users implies more problem reports; problems get reported more than success; inexperienced users may report problems that really aren't. Maybe google should data-mine this stuff, but not me.

Maybe you could have tried FreeBSD and Illumos too,but clearly, if you don't use/like them they make no sense or advantage against Linux

I have never tried Illumos and am curious about that side of things. I think it would probably be a big learning curve, so at the moment it will have to wait, but it is in the back of my mind anyway.