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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: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Tuesday November 06 2018, @09:17PM (3 children)
I quite agree. Keeping abreast of the state of free software is one of the main reasons that I frequent this site over others.
I installed OpenBSD and NetBSD on laptops earlier this year and was pleasantly surprised how well things worked.
(Score: 1) by soylentnewsinator on Tuesday November 06 2018, @09:20PM (2 children)
Can you call out any older Dell notebooks? I have an older dell that is running FreeBSD but suspend/resume doesn't work, and the general attitude I've picked up is: don't use FreeBSD on non-servers. Maybe most FreeBSD users use Mac for their preferred desktop OS?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 07 2018, @02:17PM
You sure you just didn't allocate enough swap?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 08 2018, @01:26AM
FreeBSD sucks on laptops every time I've tried it. OpenBSD is great on laptops though. The one pain area is media keys if you're into those - I think you'll only get audio control without patching your kernel.