Hi, I'm flatdog, pleased to meet $YOU (and some disclaimers)

[flatdog]

Disclaimer #1: I am not advocating for any other Operating Systems available out-there, my choices are simply mine, with good- and bad consequences.
My name is Dumitru Claudiu, I'm a romanian enthusiast of open-source everything (yep, still living in Romania).
My first first encounter of the third kind with Linux was back in 2001 (RedHat 7.*, codenamed Seawolf IIRC). That got me hooked, but I wanted some deeper knowledge. So, next step Slackware (7.1 or 8.0, my memory is aging). Then this happened : Since its first beta release in April of 1993, the Slackware Linux Project has aimed at producing the most "UNIX-like" Linux distribution out there.. WTF is this supposed to mean? Led me to FreeBSD, never looked back ever since.
Disclaimer #2: What works for me might not be the right solution for you.
My entire (home-)network runs on FreeBSD (pf, samba, weewx, poudriere, lighttpd, postgresql, unbound, NAS) with 2 exceptions:

• Work laptop (company provided)

• This very-Salix machine

Disclaimer #3: I'm not a distro-hopper.
I really like/appreciate the work involved to make Salix what it is now. Slick, polished, stable (for me so far). Some users here did a great job with implementing utilities, tools for making my/our life(ves) easy(ier) installing/maintaining/upgrading this sexy system. Hats off! Once it works, don't switch. I'm here to stay.
Disclaimer #4: I'm not a developer.
Do not expect me to write kernel modules, drivers what-not. I can handle myself with C to some degree, quite at home with shell/lua/php/some perl. I'm a sysadmin, not a programmer. I love automation of tedious, repetitive tasks and a good company.
For now, the only way I see to contribute and give something back is seeding the torrent images of Salix (fiber here).
If I can contribute in some other way, please chime in here (irssi still on the "to be configured" list).

PS: already upgraded to 5.15.117, not sure if I can build packages without breaking ABI for official Salix version.

[Papasot]

Welcome Dumitru!
You said Salix seems stable for you now, but I'm sure you will eventually realize it's not just your idea. Salix is indeed rock-solid stable. It never stands on your way, it's just there and it works. Always.

You definitely can build your own packages, I actually have a small personal repository with a few packages I just want up-to-date, and never encountered problems (I'm also using kernel 5.15.117 as you do). I doubt you will have any problems there.

I am also using FreeBSD, and I can tell, from a developer's point of view, there is no real difference. I just wrote a small initial Makefile which sets system include and lib directories (which are different in FreeBSD), and installed gmake. That was all, and was done once. Other than that, the main Makefiles are exactly the same as in Salix (and actually most GNU/Linux distros). Transition of my libraries from Salix to FreeBSD and vice-versa is literally seamless. Also, applications using said libraries work the exact same way. I would expect you, as a system admin, won't have any issues as well. Actually, I'm pretty sure you will feel at $HOME in Salix.