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My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

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141–150 of 155 posts

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#142

> Since the LG UltraFine exposes a USB HID device to control its brightness, I wrote a driver to attach to it and expose the brightness adjustment through wsconsctl display.brightness. Wow, that is impressive both from the device _and_ from the author. I wonder how many displays support controls over USB? Personally, I hate having to manually adjust my display's brightness in the evening. Edit: This got me curious an…

I'm surprised more people don't know about ddc (which works over displayport). Been using it with this gnome extension on Fedora for a while now. https://github.com/daitj/gnome-display-brightness-ddcutil

I use display-switch which is a rust wrapper around ddcutil plus some usb-port sniffing to switch my 3 monitors between my work laptop and personal desktop.

The issue is that not every monitor has full ddc support, especially consumer-targeted monitors. anything for pros will usually have pretty good support but those usually don't have great refresh rates at reasonable prices. (I noticed LG is especially bad about supporting ddc)

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#143
post #18

Something I've learned from discussing computer hardware informally online over the years is that people have vastly different standards for what it means for fans to be "silent" in use. So much so that it's hardly worth discussing, because someone will insist that such and such fan or actively-cooled device is silent, and then you buy it and it sounds like crap. I suspect it's "Cloth Ears" in many cases.

This happens with eyeballs as well as ears. Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11, or people who don't mind (or even prefer!) Windows font rendering.

>Witness people who don't notice screen tearing in X11

Most people are using a compositor that came with their DE, so screen tearing never happens.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#145

Every time anything about OpenBSD comes up on HN I just remark internally how simple and straightforward it is.

I love how I can run ps and know what every process running on it is.

I miss that on (stock) Linux. At least on my Gentoo system at home (yes yes, I know) I can have a nice clean pstree, but my work laptop runs like two hundred things before I even open a program.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#146

Why people insist in BSDs when Linux works better?

Modern desktop Linux barely works, honestly. Its saving grace is the wide support for basically everything under the sun, both hardware and software-wise. But if you know what programs you need and they all run on a BSD, I don't see why you wouldn't use it. (Heck, I'm tempted from time to time)

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#148

> Since the LG UltraFine exposes a USB HID device to control its brightness, I wrote a driver to attach to it and expose the brightness adjustment through wsconsctl display.brightness. Wow, that is impressive both from the device _and_ from the author. I wonder how many displays support controls over USB? Personally, I hate having to manually adjust my display's brightness in the evening. Edit: This got me curious an…

I'm surprised more people don't know about ddc (which works over displayport). Been using it with this gnome extension on Fedora for a while now. https://github.com/daitj/gnome-display-brightness-ddcutil

Not only DisplayPort. The past year I found out even works for VGA and DVI, and now I control the brightness of my monitor with the mouse wheel :-)

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#149

I enjoy reading posts like this, which delve into personal setups and the intentions behind them. However, I found this a bit puzzling: > While not an absolute requirement, integrated speakers would be a nice option on the monitor so I wouldn't have to buy separate ones and find a place for them on my desk. For such a methodically constructed workspace, especially one that goes out of its way to avoid fan noise, I'd…

I know a lot of people for whom the sound of their iPad (Pro) or MacBook is good enough. Those are even thinner than most monitors.

Re: My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop (2021)

#150
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised more people don't know about ddc (which works over displayport). Been using it with this gnome extension on Fedora for a while now. https://github.com/daitj/gnome-display-brightness-ddcutil

Not only DisplayPort. The past year I found out even works for VGA and DVI, and now I control the brightness of my monitor with the mouse wheel :-)

DisplayPort is the more surprising one. DDC came from VGA and DVI and uses the I2C lines that also connect the EDID EEPROM, but Displayport doesn't even have I2C pins if you look at the pinout, so it has to be tunneled: "DisplayPort does not have the I2C SLA/SLC pins. Instead, the logical I2C signals are converted at each end into messages on the AUX channel. Put another way, DDC is implemented using the AUX channel, but the AUX channel itself is not DDC. The "multiplexing" of I2C over the AUX channel is transparent to all but the lowest level of I2C software at each end."
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