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Theo de Raadt writes a fascinating story from the s2k15 hackathon in Brisbane about the reasons that the mice and keyboards were problematic on the new ThinkPad X1, specifically, having keyboard repeat and shutter during install, eventually being figured out to happen due to the large and extra sensitive touchpad. It all came down to the pms driver, or lack thereof, as it's missing only on the RAMDISK kernels used on the install media, and they were the only ones being visibly affected.
"The solution is to forcibly reset the mouse port at attach," de Raadt proclaims. Some other keyboard issues, notably boot -c not working on some machines, were also determined to be caused by the mouse ports, too.
But the changes are risky, and require lots of testing prior to commit, due to the plethora of keyboard controller models, so, it didn't make the cut for the upcoming 5.7 release.
(Score: 2) by joekiser on Friday March 13 2015, @04:53PM
Using a relatively recent Thinkpad with OpenBSD has historically been an overwhelmingly pleasant experience. The only thing missing is a tool or system call that prolongs battery life on AC (example: once discharged to 40%, the battery automatically starts charging to 80% again before starting its discharge cycle). This software is available on Linux and under Lenovo's ThinkVantage suite for Windows. I went through a 6-cell on my X201/X200s Frankenpad in about 8 months under OpenBSD, when it would have lasted several years on other platforms.
XFCE, LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC, etc. are all kept up to date and hardware support is at least as good as Windows. I have no experience using other laptops with OpenBSD.
Debt is the currency of slaves.