On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 08:34:16PM -0400, Implausibility wrote: > Hi. > > I have a few old ThinkPads here, and I'd like to explore getting OpenBSD > running as a lightweight desktop computer. > > I don't need a lot, I spend most of my time at a shell prompt, but I'm > thinking I need a better window manager, possibly Firefox (or a recommended > lightweight alternative) and any invaluable X-based utilities.
I'm biased in that I use older computers. I find that using spectrwm as a window manager and terminus fonts to be an excellent and extremely low memory and CPU time. It defaults to 10 screens and can be extended to 22 (right?)Within each screen you can have multiple windows and "float" them into nice positions, just like managers like KDE do. I started off with KDE, coming from the windows world, but quickly tired of it and jumped over to spectrwm once it was developed. Ports contains a few programs that are NOT in packages and also some FLAVORS that you might prefer over the standard packages. But always use the packages unless you have some special needs. I find looking around the ports tree very helpful to find out possible programs I need. Then I just type pkg_add program_i_need program_to_try, etc. I install lynx text browser and use lynx $PKG_PATH to look for relevant but not obvious choices. I speak Spanish also which makes finding Spanish language files for different programs a breeze doing that. But lynx works poorly outside of a window manager xterm. I open another xterm next to it and pkg_add away everything I see that might be good. Maybe bad advice, but I use ifconfig xxx0 down, pull the card out, then back in and try again. ifconfig xxx0 scan is very helpful! And of course, asking for exactly what you need (in subject!) might get you good advice. Or maybe not. Behind the scenes, the developers are working their arses off making things better, so don't be offended if you don't get an answer. Good luck Chris Bennett > > I've had trouble getting the laptop connected to my local WiFi network, > despite having compatible cards and a straightforward security config (WPA2), > despite having followed the documentation. If there's a > network-connection-manager GUI available, that would be nice, but isn't > essential. > > I know how to install things via the ports, but traversing the directory > structure to find useful packages is painful. If there's a more friendly way > to search for and discover new/interesting ports packages, I'd appreciate a > link. > > Thanks.
