FWIW, about 5 years ago, my wife bought me a Toshiba NB305 that came with Windows 7 Starter, which I tried to use. I'm okay with Windows when I need to use it, but Starter edition might as well be a Windows kernel with IE and almost no customization available. I do need Windows to program my ham radios, and at the time, I needed a proprietary Windows-only VPN client for work.
Worried about hardware support, I tossed Ubuntu on it. It was usable, but none of the hot keys (volume, brightness, wifi toggle etc) worked, neither did the webcam. It was also more sluggish than Win7 Starter. After a month or so of that, I used the factory restore image, resized the Windows partition, then followed the excellent instructions for multi-booting Windows and OpenBSD 4.8 through the Microsoft bootloader and bcdedit. I've used OpenBSD as my primary OS on that machine ever since and despite its age, it still feels light and nimble with daily use. I have a bunch of other Toshiba laptops (most newer), and it feels like I got *REALLY* lucky with this NB305, because on all the other Toshibas, OpenBSD has something that doesn't quite work right, often picky azalia (sound) or wifi. This is why you do the research before you spend the cash instead of just assuming a brand itself is golden. At any rate, I am exceedingly thankful that several devs and users have come forward with suggestions on what *TO* buy and what else works well with OpenBSD. I am absolutely listening. This little Toshiba isn't going to last forever, and I prefer ultrabook/netbook form-factor because I'm frequently on-the-go, and don't require tons of computrons for the SSH, email and basic web browsing I do on a daily basis. On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Peter J. Philipp <[email protected]> wrote: > On 07/15/15 18:28, [email protected] wrote: > >>> I'm considering buying a new netbook... > > > > So you asked what not to buy. You got some good and solid advice from > > knowledgeable people here regarding what works great including > > OpenBSD coverage. > > I'm really happy with my old netbook though. Guess what everything > worked on it except wifi. So I put trust into the same brand, and it > has bitten me. X won't work, the intel drm driver doesn't work. > > I hacked a little in the kernel to see if a simple fix would fix it, it > didn't. However the bright news is that I bought this netbook for a > purpose of a personal project. Those features that I needed work. > > So I'm somewhat disappointed but it's not the end of the world. > > BTW by the time someone said "don't buy brand" I already bought it. It > came shipped to me here this morning. > > I did not chose to get a Lenovo because I felt they were pricy over the > 350 euros that I paid. Maybe my own fault then, but I wanted to be > adventurous. > > Cheers, > -peter
