@ajroach42

That sounds like a really good plan. If the installer can use your wifi and get online, then you should be golden.

Download [the handbook] onto another device so you can have it handy when you're setting up your GUI of choice. It's quite well-written, and there's only a couple steps needed to get the GUI going: from memory, it's just a matter of installing and enabling the right video driver, and of course the GUI programs/desktop/environment you want. I'm running sway (Wayland) happily on it now, I know other folks have gotten KDE Plasma working.

Expect not-wonderful wifi speeds, but it's fine for casual browsing. Newer intel wifi chips might do better because of newer drivers. It's something they're actively working on.

If the installer isn't able to get online, you may run into problems, and might need to try a cheap USB dongle or try a different USB, or some other solution. But thinkpads are usually pretty well-supported. This x260 has been perfect.

If you get stuck, just holler. Lots of really friendly and helpful #FreeBSD folks on fedi! #OpenBSD and #NetBSD, too!

@ajroach42

I think #OpenBSD has the best combo of ease of setup and hardware support at this time, but #FreeBSD is advancing every month.

FreeBSD doesn't give you a GUI by default (and it's a little more involved than just installing X11 or Wayland, but it's not too bad), but they're working on adding that to the installer.

Both of those BSDs have been making great progress the past couple years.

The story of Propolice https://lobste.rs/s/6i1cfa #compilers #historical #openbsd #security
http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/propolice.html

If ungoogled-chromium refuses to launch for you on #OpenBSD 7.8-current with it looking for but not finding files in /etc/chromium, it is because /etc/ungoogled-chromium is going to be /etc/chromium in future releases and so new versions are already looking for things but not finding them.

Symlinking two dirs to their "new" places works for now. Please make sure that the destinations are empty.

$ doas ln -s /etc/ungoogled-chromium /etc/chromium
$ ln -s ~/.config/ungoogled-chromium ~/.config/chromium

I guess fixes are coming eventually, maintainer has been notified.

Fish Alpinism

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://triapul.cz/_/1765291397

Unironically using #Dillo while ungoogled-chromium is playing crashy-crashy on the latest snapshot on #OpenBSD. It's just the best.

@SrRochardBunson @ajroach42 @stefano

The BSDs are *awesome* operating systems. #FreeBSD is a high performance general purpose OS. It is modern #Unix. #NetBSD is for portability, it supports nearly every CPU architecture under the sun. #OpenBSD is security-focused. #GhostBSD is a FreeBSD fork focused on the desktop.

Most of my experience is with FreeBSD, which I will enthusiastically share. It is unquestionably a solid server OS. As a desktop OS, it works quite well. It definitely does not feel like "Linux from 2004." The major desktop environments like #KDE #GNOME #XFCE are all supported and #nvidia releases drivers for the OS too. Modern hardware is supported. For *cutting edge hardware*, #Linux may be the better bet here. It's a little slower to adopt cutting edge gear because it is focused on stability and elegant solutions, not trend-chasing.

FreeBSD is an excellent OS to learn. It runs beautifully and it's more coherent and better designed. Documentation is *solid*.

Edit: Corrected errors. GhostBSD, not DragonflyBSD. Thanks @aru

What is BSD? Come to a conference to find out! https://nxdomain.no/~peter/what_is_bsd_come_to_a_conference_to_find_out.html

Also, the @bsdcan call for papers is on until January 17th 2026 https://www.bsdcan.org/2026/papers.html #bsd #bsdcan #openbsd #netbsd #freebsd #development #conference #freesoftware #libresoftware

Fish Alpinism via @cyplo https://lobste.rs/s/liwan7 #art #openbsd
https://triapul.cz/_/1765291397

My RAM-miserly setup on #OpenBSD. XD

rld@falcon:~$ free
                     total              used              free
Mem:                  3.7G              2.4G              1.3G
Swap:                 4.0G                0B              4.0G
rld@falcon:~$ top -bn1 |grep ^Memory
Memory: Real: 304M/2209M act/tot Free: 1473M Cache: 948M Swap: 0K/4071M
rld@falcon:~$ uname -srm
OpenBSD 7.8 amd64
rld@falcon:~$ ps wwaux |sort -nsk6 |awk '$6/=1024 {printf "%5.02f %s\n", $6, $11}' |tail
 6.85 i3bar
 8.89 xenodm:
10.71 /usr/local/bin/i3
12.84 syncthing
15.81 /sbin/mount_mfs
16.67 dunst
63.16 alacritty
63.23 alacritty
67.93 /usr/X11R6/bin/X
88.31 /usr/local/bin/syncthing

@arosano @libremelon @izder456 @joel @rqm @RussSharek

Sorry it took me a few days to get back around to it. #Emoji is definitely working a lot better in #OpenBSD 7.8!

Some of the complex, multi-character emoji don't show up quite right, and they're not all in full color yet, but for the most part, it just works! I hadn't tried it in a while!

@c_th1 @kuketzblog

#openbsd 🇨🇦

"OpenBSD und NetBSD trennten sich im November 1995. Da das OpenBSD-Projekt in Kanada gegründet wurde, unterlag es nicht den Exportbestimmungen der Vereinigten Staaten, was die Verwendung starker Kryptographie in OpenBSD zuließ.'

https://www.zenarmor.com/docs/de/freebsd-tutorials/freebsd-vs-openbsd

Hey, I wrote this.

http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/propolice.html

#openbsd