81–90 of 114 posts
Minimalist Desktop == not very much works/to use? Minimalist in the backwoods cabin, no running water sense. This is not intended to be mean (hey, if it works for you!), but in many ways this is about vibes, and this does have a Linux of 25 years ago vibes.
> 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.
I can't think of anything else it could be needed for other than various GTK-bloat IPC so I'll make a note in the article!
Thanks again,
Daniel
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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?
Honestly, any competent Linux or FreeBSD admin should adapt to OpenBSD easily.
* finding FreeBSD guys, who probably the best match here is somewhat puzzle on its own
* highly likely common approaches in modern world would fail - cloud-init, systemd units to be adopted, not even mentioning Docker/podman and highly likely monitoring/metrics tooling. Not checked, but very unsure NewRelic or Datadog are compatible => admins will not be able to use their previous skillset effectively
* convincing people to join team of supporting OpenBSD systems can be somewhat tricky. I'm basing on my own feelings here - I'd rise the bar for salary 2 times and even that will think twice on should I spend my time on such experience
* leaving performance alone, I bet it will require extra hardware planning instead of buying any Supermicro/HP/whatever server and be sure it's Redhat compatible. Must be very serious reasons to put yourself in chores of this sort. And reasonable admins must consider such risks and delays for rollouts of products in production
So on.
1) The screenshot was from another system before I decided to do a write-up; my current setup is as per the article without further customisation.
2) cwm provides virtual desktops through grouping. That desktop pictured is what I use for email, IRC, Matrix, and RSS/newsboat.
3) Would I be better off in the console with tmux? No. Could I survive on the console? Yes. I use a web browser and another terminal in desktop 2, and other GUI programs in another virtual desktop. There are very few pieces of software I can't use on OpenBSD; Some people even play Steam games on it!
4) OpenBSD base is exquisite and the operating system itself is so easy to configure and maintain compared to GNU/Linux. It's simplicity and 'retro' configuration doesn't take away from its power or usability in modern computing (for all those saying it looks like an old GNU/Linux screenshot).
Unlike GNU/Linux and the linux kernel itself, the direction of OpenBSD has never and will never be dictated by corporate need or greed. The licence is arguably more open, allowing both innovation in open source and commercial use - but you would never see, for example, Elon Musk's next obsession making its way into the kernel because it was fashionable.
Meanwhile, Ubuntu continues on its downward spiral, Debian has just voted to include firmware blobs by default, and don't get me started on what macOS has become - or should I say 'iMacOS'.
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.
I have a similar setup as I mentioned in another comment. I wouldn't say it is limited or not fully featured. It does everything one needs. There's nothing missing, rather it lacks the bloat. It begins with a basic system and you build up the things you need and want on top of it (versus starting with a bloated system and trying to remove things you don't need or want). Why do I prefer the minimal setup? In my mind,…
Not blaming your setup is bad for your needs, but I'm pessimistic on ideals of 700 days uptime and not changing things for 16 years. Sign of stagnation for me.
My needs includes being able to cast my screen to TV or play music via AirPlay or chat in Slack/Mattermost or run some ML/Cuda stuff or tell (by voice) my laptop (Cortana actually) to set alarm for 5 minutes or...
I'm not sure I could do all that with setup of the sort you have.
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.
As a minimalist setup there's not really anything of note you could screenshot; Just a bunch of windows without decorations and some non-bloated software.
Minimalist Desktop == not very much works/to use? Minimalist in the backwoods cabin, no running water sense. This is not intended to be mean (hey, if it works for you!), but in many ways this is about vibes, and this does have a Linux of 25 years ago vibes.
OpenBSD base has almost everything else I need.
For example, OpenBSD won't adopt ZFS. Won't adopt Rust within the OS. Won't use hyperthreading. All aren't even up for debate. They have their reasons, but also I do enjoy my creature comforts. Because at a certain level of additional ease does have its benefits?
It feels like the other side of the Simple Made Easy talk by Rich Hickey[0]. Yes, we shouldn't aggravate complexity, but also we need not make things unnecessarily hard on ourselves either for the sake of "simplicity" or "minimalism". It's a balance for the rest of us. I think the goal should be to strive for both easy and simple, and an OpenBSD desktop falls short re: easy for me. And, if the point is "It's simple/minimal!", I think that simplicity should have benefits (it's more composable..., it fits on a very small flash device,...). We shouldn't simply worship simplicity for its own sake.
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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.
Wider question - how it makes your productivity/life better?
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it only takes ~8 hours Um, what? Can't say as I've experienced this. Only time I ever felt like this is when I was downloading rustc and cargo from the FreeBSD repos. The rest is semi-fair, if not completely understanding of the trade offs (rootless is mostly good, lots of people use docker on Linux, no one is deploying their web infrastructure on MacOS, not because you couldn't, but because it's not free, etc.) As…
I'm only taking issue with the "Just Works" comment, because it's most certainly not true when you're talking about development workflows. If you're a video editor or a music producer, MacOS becomes a much better value proposition. For developers though, MacOS gets treated like a second-class citizen. Entire swaths of Open-Source software will not run on MacOS out of the box. You don't even get a package manager with…
I take your point, but "Just Works" on Linux can be a more difficult road than maybe we often care to acknowledge. If you didn't go through the "OMG why won't my laptop suspend properly" years (which maybe still haven't left us...?), then let me tell you UGH, give me a Macbook as my Unix desktop/laptop experience.
I really think it's mostly what you're comfortable/familiar with. Mention NixOS to me and I think interesting, but it actually sounds more complicated than a Time Machine backup on a ZFS NAS to me (although probably much more elegant).