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from the maybe-you-CAN-take-it-with-you? dept.
Software developer Cullum Smith has written a detailed blog post as a guide to a secure and streamlined installation of OpenBSD 6.4 on a laptop. He goes through installation, networking, initial configuration and advanced customization, getting started with the graphical interface, and adding packages including the Chromium web browser. He also touches on multimedia and battery questions as well as updates. As usual, OpenBSD lives up to the do it well or not at all philosophy.
It's been almost a year since I've posted any articles, and I'm afraid I have a confession to make...I've joined the dark side! Most people know my site from the How to Run a Mail Server post, which targeted FreeBSD. A few months ago, I converted all that infrastructure to an automated OpenBSD platform. Turns out OpenBSD was so much easier, I decided to run it as a desktop too.
You won't find nearly as many online resources about setting up OpenBSD, because honestly, you really don't need any. Unlike much of Linux and FreeBSD, the included manuals are high quality, coherent, and filled with practical examples. You also need very little third party software to do basic tasks—almost everything you need is well-integrated into the base system.
[Years back, I'd read of issues with laptops and entering/exiting hibernate/suspend modes, driving internal/external displays, and limited run-time on battery power; how well have these been straightened out? What laptops are BSD/Linux-friendly and what distribution do you run on yours? --Ed.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:04PM
I'm not really a BSD guy, but I'll agree with your post. With Debian, pretty much every file manager ever built for *nix is available. BSD and Arch, a few others, don't offer _every_single_file_manager_ever_created. But, if you need a feature, you can find it, all the same.
Maybe it's alright to reinvent the wheel every now and then. But, there is really little need to keep a stockpile of every wheel ever invented!