4 ms·

I've played with OpenBSD on a VM a couple times and really liked it, but I'd like to use it on real hardware and try and force myself to use it as my main perso

by cblum 6y ago

I've played with OpenBSD on a VM a couple times and really liked it, but I'd like to use it on real hardware and try and force myself to use it as my main personal system at least for a while as an experiment. I've often heard that Thinkpads make great OpenBSD laptops. Are there any models in particular the HN crowd would recommend? In terms of my hardware needs, I don't really care about graphics like you'd get with an Nvidia card, but I do need wi-fi since it'd be really hard to set up a wired connection to my router in my current apartment.

smhenderson 6y ago
I've had great luck with T-series ThinkPads. I'm using a T520 as a daily driver at the moment and I've had no real issues with it. I installed it on an E series laptop a while ago and had issues with sound (this was a few versions ago, probably 6.3, and I was just playing around at the time so I never figured out what the problem was). Mind you I use this mainly for work so my needs are simple, an editor, a browser, a compiler and the like. The default window manager cwm makes for a simple "desktop" for me and the only thing I use at the moment for work that's not from base is mariadb, vim and firefox (plus dependencies of course). So I don't have a lot of splashy graphics to load or anything like that and don't do video or image editing very often. But even if you do need more, the package repository has a huge selection of programs and in my experience they all just work when installed. On the other hand I put Battle for Wesnoth on it and although that's not really a very graphics intense game it runs great on the laptop. Overall I really like using it day to day.
- morganvachon 6y ago
  > The default window manager cwm Just a slight correction, if you meant the "default" as in the window manager that starts on a freshly installed system: It's not cwm but fvwm. With that said, OpenBSD ships with cwm and it's trivial to switch between the two, but they are very different.
  - smhenderson 6y ago
    Oh, you're right, I'd forgotten that. I think it's so ingrained in me to copy my dotfiles to a new machine before I do much else that I don't usually ever see fvwm. I always add myself to doas, move some public keys around, install a few packages and then copy my dotfiles before I ever launch X for the first time. And yes, they are very different. I remember using fvwm fondly on Slackware Linux back in the mid 90's. I had hours of fun trying to configure it to look like Windows 95 and populating menus, all in a plain text file, no gui config available! I think I read somewhere recently that fvwm is still Theo's preferred WM and that's why it's the default...
    - morganvachon 6y ago
      > I remember using fvwm fondly on Slackware Linux back in the mid 90's. Same, well late 90s here, and yep that was my go-to on Slackware, mostly because it was quite usable out of the box. I eventually went to Blackbox, then Fluxbox, then Gnome about six months before Pat decided to stop shipping it. I went to Xfce from there and never looked back (I never liked KDE before Plasma, and 4.x is still the default in Slackware).
nopcode 6y ago
Thinkpad X series are very popular among openbsd devs. I recommend a second-hand x210/x220/x230/x240... works great. @jcs tests popular laptop models on his blog: jcs.org
LeoPanthera 6y ago
The lack of any kind of bluetooth support is an instant blocker for me - but it works great as a server OS.
- toyg 6y ago
  I think bluetooth might work with a few specific adapters, pretty sure there was a comment saying as much in the “Carmack helping OpenBSD” thread yesterday. So I guess that, if you’re willing to sacrifice a USB port or two, it could work. My reservations are more about sleep (even Linux still struggles with that) and power management (ditto). If my daily driver were a tower desktop, I’d probably use OpenBSD.
  - pimeys 6y ago
    I've been using OpenBSD in my X230 for over a year now and everything works out of the box. Sleep never fails, power management needs one extra daemon up, integrated WWAN module just works with ifconfig... I have a desktop computer with Linux just because there is certain software I need for my work. But hardware support with OpenBSD and ThinkPads will for sure be a smoother experience compared to many Linux distros.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Bluetooth will not work with OpenBSD because they trow the complete stack out of the operation-system (too buggy, too insecure)
lllr_finger 6y ago
T450s worked flawlessly. Any of the Thinkpads that you see on eBay being retired by corporations and refurbished for $200-$500USD would be great candidates.
upofadown 6y ago
My gen 5 X1 Carbon works quite well...

by cblum 6y ago

smhenderson 6y ago

I've had great luck with T-series ThinkPads. I'm using a T520 as a daily driver at the moment and I've had no real issues with it. I installed it on an E series laptop a while ago and had issues with sound (this was a few versions ago, probably 6.3, and I was just playing around at the time so I never figured out what the problem was). Mind you I use this mainly for work so my needs are simple, an editor, a browser, a compiler and the like. The default window manager cwm makes for a simple "desktop" for me and the only thing I use at the moment for work that's not from base is mariadb, vim and firefox (plus dependencies of course). So I don't have a lot of splashy graphics to load or anything like that and don't do video or image editing very often. But even if you do need more, the package repository has a huge selection of programs and in my experience they all just work when installed. On the other hand I put Battle for Wesnoth on it and although that's not really a very graphics intense game it runs great on the laptop. Overall I really like using it day to day.

morganvachon 6y ago
> The default window manager cwm Just a slight correction, if you meant the "default" as in the window manager that starts on a freshly installed system: It's not cwm but fvwm. With that said, OpenBSD ships with cwm and it's trivial to switch between the two, but they are very different.
- smhenderson 6y ago
  Oh, you're right, I'd forgotten that. I think it's so ingrained in me to copy my dotfiles to a new machine before I do much else that I don't usually ever see fvwm. I always add myself to doas, move some public keys around, install a few packages and then copy my dotfiles before I ever launch X for the first time. And yes, they are very different. I remember using fvwm fondly on Slackware Linux back in the mid 90's. I had hours of fun trying to configure it to look like Windows 95 and populating menus, all in a plain text file, no gui config available! I think I read somewhere recently that fvwm is still Theo's preferred WM and that's why it's the default...
  - morganvachon 6y ago
    > I remember using fvwm fondly on Slackware Linux back in the mid 90's. Same, well late 90s here, and yep that was my go-to on Slackware, mostly because it was quite usable out of the box. I eventually went to Blackbox, then Fluxbox, then Gnome about six months before Pat decided to stop shipping it. I went to Xfce from there and never looked back (I never liked KDE before Plasma, and 4.x is still the default in Slackware).

nopcode 6y ago

Thinkpad X series are very popular among openbsd devs. I recommend a second-hand x210/x220/x230/x240... works great. @jcs tests popular laptop models on his blog: jcs.org

LeoPanthera 6y ago

The lack of any kind of bluetooth support is an instant blocker for me - but it works great as a server OS.

toyg 6y ago
I think bluetooth might work with a few specific adapters, pretty sure there was a comment saying as much in the “Carmack helping OpenBSD” thread yesterday. So I guess that, if you’re willing to sacrifice a USB port or two, it could work. My reservations are more about sleep (even Linux still struggles with that) and power management (ditto). If my daily driver were a tower desktop, I’d probably use OpenBSD.
- pimeys 6y ago
  I've been using OpenBSD in my X230 for over a year now and everything works out of the box. Sleep never fails, power management needs one extra daemon up, integrated WWAN module just works with ifconfig... I have a desktop computer with Linux just because there is certain software I need for my work. But hardware support with OpenBSD and ThinkPads will for sure be a smoother experience compared to many Linux distros.
- nix23 6y ago
  Bluetooth will not work with OpenBSD because they trow the complete stack out of the operation-system (too buggy, too insecure)

lllr_finger 6y ago

T450s worked flawlessly. Any of the Thinkpads that you see on eBay being retired by corporations and refurbished for $200-$500USD would be great candidates.

upofadown 6y ago

My gen 5 X1 Carbon works quite well...