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OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

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Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#71

Post by knorker »

doublepg23 wrote: post #10
knorker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article says it's the OpenBSD default. As for why: A power loss will likely only affect filesystems being written to. So less risk of ending up with an unbootable system if / and /usr are not being written to. Even moreso if they are mapped read-only. I don't know about now, but I've seen people only enable softdep mount option for FSs that need some extra speed, and not on / and /usr. (article does this for /…

I’ve posted it here before but the frustrating state of OpenBSDs filesystems is a big issue for me putting it into production.

Yeah. I don't quite remember now, but I think many of the packages don't work if you don't have a separate /usr/local fs, since the packages need wxallowed.

Unless you want to enable wxallowed on / or /usr.

Then of course there's the fact that they don't do journalling. It's not my expertise but if literally everyone is doing journalling instead of softdep, then maybe they're right.

I've used OpenBSD off and on since 2.1, and I've experienced much more data loss on it than on Linux. So yeah I'm also not a fan of OpenBSD's filesystems.

I feel like OpenBSD don't have enough staffing to do the right things (e.g. Wayland, Bluetooth), so instead they try to do what they can, but right.

Which is fair enough, but will become more and more like retro computing for every year that passes.

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#72

Post by hd99 »

just to add my participation, Im using openbsd through dwm (isotop project) or xfce, it depends.

rest of time, using lmde, not bad.. does macos have still users? :D

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#73

Post by knorker »

CoolCold wrote: post #24
doublepg23 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve posted it here before but the frustrating state of OpenBSDs filesystems is a big issue for me putting it into production.

My first one would be "can I hire any reasonable sysadmin for that at all?" Among others - is it supported by any hosting vendor or I'll be forced to tinker with it myself without even cloud-init tooling?

Most clouds don't support it, but vultr.com does.

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#74

Post by MisterTea »

INTPenis wrote: post #22

The word minimal often means minimalistic in appearance and resource use, what I want is minimal work. That's why I run default gnome.

I run xfce on my Linux machine and find that it does what I want out of the box.

I'm sure most of the people here complaining about custom configs can't be bothered to read documentation and hope the gui gives them enough hints to stumble through using it. And this has worked well enough for simple programs as visual hints allow one to stumble through the interface using trial and error.

The gui as documentation has done massive amounts of damage because you can only hint so much before the idea breaks down in the face of 100's of knobs and levers. Then the GUI becomes a liability because once the program becomes stable management (or bored oss devs) find reasons to change the gui breaking the user experience by corrupting the documentation. Now the user has to re-learn everything. The web then becomes a graveyard of obsolete how-to guides.

Goes to show you why emacs or vi and their clones haven't changed much ui wise yet visual studio and other monster ide's are moving targets. man pages and command driven interfaces are very stable.

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#75

Post by MisterTea »

somat wrote: post #45
INTPenis wrote: post #22

The word minimal often means minimalistic in appearance and resource use, what I want is minimal work. That's why I run default gnome.

I like to understand the system and am happiest with a simple setup. So openbsd with a small tileing wm(I use spectrwm) is perfect for me. If I were less addicted to web browsing I would probably use plan 9.

> If I were less addicted to web browsing I would probably use plan 9.

You can run a linux vm using vmx on 9front and run a browser in there. Not fast as lots of vm work is still needed to improve guest performance (send patches.)

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#76

Post by washadjeffmad »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #66
darrmit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was true 3-5 years ago, but you can now buy OEM laptops with Linux preinstalled that "just work" the same as a Mac. Granted, in the long run I don't expect many to be able to maintain Linux unless they're pretty technical. But the whole "waste hours" idea just isn't true these days.

> This was true 3-5 years ago, but you can now buy OEM laptops with Linux preinstalled that "just work" the same as a Mac. With the trackpad working as good as it does in Mac? And Bluetooth/WiFi? And as good of battery life due to strong hibernate/standby/sleep when you close the lid working? And equal support for external displays? If Ubuntu is really 1:1 on par with Mac OS X in all categories, I'd be surprised.

Linux != Ubuntu, but yeah, while no one beats Apple's trackpad tech, the rest is there.

The biggest gotcha is still vendor hardware choices that don't follow spec. Appreciating that MacOS doesn't work on any laptops Apple doesn't make, it's pretty amazing how great the baseline for support is with any general Linux distro, even on Macs.

Also, Mac wifi and BT use some proprietary magic that isn't OS dependent. Just to emphasize that the hardware and OS are separate things.

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#77

Post by the_qbit »

Fnoord wrote: post #57
CoolCold wrote: post #27

Not related to OpenBSD itself, more for "minimalistic" approach - screenshots with irssi were popular like 25 or 20 years ago. I see kinda nothing new here, just fly stuck in amber. Has minimalistic meant to be "limited"? Then makes sense. TUI based? Somewhat makes a bit of sense. Minimalistic but yet full featured? I couldn't see that on provided sample.

And I thought my Sway config is complex. Look at this stuff, it even runs X. Does Wayland work on OpenBSD? The howto also uses an FTP client, and doesn't explain how it got the checksum.

"file transfer program" https://man.openbsd.org/ftp

Wayland applications can be used with the Arcan display server, but there is no native support for OpenBSD in Wayland.

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#78

Post by danielnechtan »

numlock86 wrote: post #30

If your minimalist desktop is just terminal space, why bother with X?

Virtual desktop 1 (pictured) is just tmux with a bunch of communications programs I have.

Virtual Desktop 2: Firefox, sometimes an additional terminal

Virtual Desktop 3: More GUI apps, though often vim split with something else, depending on what I'm working on.

I use plenty GUI-based software, but there's a lot of unnecessary bloat - both in resources and on the eyes - that we can do without.

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#79

Post by danielnechtan »

znpy wrote: post #54
CoolCold wrote: post #27

Not related to OpenBSD itself, more for "minimalistic" approach - screenshots with irssi were popular like 25 or 20 years ago. I see kinda nothing new here, just fly stuck in amber. Has minimalistic meant to be "limited"? Then makes sense. TUI based? Somewhat makes a bit of sense. Minimalistic but yet full featured? I couldn't see that on provided sample.

It’s very easy to be minimalistic when you’re doing very little.

I don't need nor desire desktop software written with web technologies or other bloated UIs to be productive, thank you.

If you enjoy the bloat of Electron and using your toy mouse to make your computer do what many people do in a terminal then that's your choice. I won't begrudge someone their TOMY computer experience.

Re: OpenBSD Minimalist Desktop

#80

Post by jmclnx »

> If you are not using xfce, then you will need to enable messagebus/dbus with:

Not too sure of that, on OpenBSD I set this:

export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="no"

In ~/.xsession to avoid using dbus. My WM is cwm(1). Without dbus I am not missing anything (AFAIK), even when executing firefox. So wondering what dbus gives someone on OpenBSD.

Anyway, nice write-up.

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