OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Well, just check on OpenPorts.se if the software you need is there. I don't think there are many GNOME users on OpenBSD (you may have some better luck with XFCE, but it's just my guess). However, I think that after GNOME3 is out there, GNOME 2.30 might stay in ports for a while and get some polishing, so it might become a stable and robust experience, just like with KDE 3.5. Second, check for your hardware. There is no such thing as standard x86. You might have an unsupported wi-fi or ethernet card or anything else, there might be some ACPI issues. And you're not likely to get 3D if you have Nvidia (Intel ATI should work, to my knowledge). And you're lucky if you don't need Unicode. For me that's a big show-stopper on a desktop machine. Once OpenBSD gets UTF-8, there won't be just any reason for me not to use it on a laptop. All my hardware (Thinkpad X200s) is supported, all the apps I need are there. It's just that I don't want to think about the encoding of the files I get on USB sticks, etc. There should be some UTF-love coming to 4.8, I believe. Oh, and one more thing - think about any proprietary software you want to use. Because you're likely won't be able to do so. It's not just Flash, but also Skype, for example. Other than that you'll get a stable and nice OS, much better than Linux in some regards, not so point-n-click (no GUI manager for wireless connections, for example), but transparent and predictable. I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video, etc ... My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Thanks
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
And you're lucky if you don't need Unicode. For me that's a big show-stopper on a desktop machine. Once OpenBSD gets UTF-8, there won't be just any reason for me not to use it on a laptop. All my hardware (Thinkpad X200s) is supported, all the apps I need are there. It's just that I don't want to think about the encoding of the files I get on USB sticks, etc. There should be some UTF-love coming to 4.8, I believe. By the way, my friend and I were thinking about implementing Unicode in OpenBSD's userland, as part of a plan to learn encoding and C since we are Computer Science/Engineering students. Is there any work going on on this? We are thinking about doing this next month, since we will be on vacation... Since we are noobs, I can't guarantee we will actually do it, but at least _I_ will try. We never developed a serious project, and I don't know how difficult this will be. Any advice? By the way, is it required for us to use current to do this?
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Ilya Ilembitov ilembi...@gmail.com wrote: And you're lucky if you don't need Unicode. For me that's a big show-stopper on a desktop machine. Once OpenBSD gets UTF-8, there won't be just any reason for me not to use it on a laptop. All my hardware (Thinkpad X200s) is supported, all the apps I need are there. It's just that I don't want to think about the encoding of the files I get on USB sticks, etc. There should be some UTF-love coming to 4.8, I believe. If You are talking about Stefan Sperling's work on UTF-8 (announced on Undeadly), than it works for me exceptionally and I'm freely reading and writing my Russian language mails in uxterm. But no codepage option for mount_msdos yet. Oh, and one more thing - think about any proprietary software you want to use. Because you're likely won't be able to do so. It's not just Flash, but also Skype, for example. Linux binary emulation? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=mount_ntfs -- Dmitrij D. Czarkoff
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
czark...@gmail.com wrote: Ilya Ilembitov ilembi...@gmail.com wrote: And you're lucky if you don't need Unicode. For me that's a big show-stopper on a desktop machine. Once OpenBSD gets UTF-8, there won't be just any reason for me not to use it on a laptop. All my hardware (Thinkpad X200s) is supported, all the apps I need are there. It's just that I don't want to think about the encoding of the files I get on USB sticks, etc. There should be some UTF-love coming to 4.8, I believe. If You are talking about Stefan Sperling's work on UTF-8 (announced on Undeadly), than it works for me exceptionally and I'm freely reading and writing my Russian language mails in uxterm. But no codepage option for mount_msdos yet. Oh, and one more thing - think about any proprietary software you want to use. Because you're likely won't be able to do so. It's not just Flash, but also Skype, for example. Linux binary emulation? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=mount_ntfs -- Dmitrij D. Czarkoff NTFS: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvsm=127784940712724w=2 Just use Linux. -- DISCLAIMER: http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/ This message will self-destruct in 3 seconds.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
VICTOR TARABOLA CORTIANO vt...@c3sl.ufpr.br wrote: By the way, my friend and I were thinking about implementing Unicode in OpenBSD's userland, as part of a plan to learn encoding and C since we are Computer Science/Engineering students. Is there any work going on on this? http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=mount_ntfs -- Dmitrij D. Czarkoff
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Abel Abraham Camarillo Ojeda acam...@the00z.org wrote: NTFS: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvsm=127784940712724w=2 Just use Linux. % ls -1 /usr/src/sys/ntfs CVS TODO ntfs.h ntfs_compr.c ntfs_compr.h ntfs_conv.c ntfs_ihash.c ntfs_ihash.h ntfs_inode.h ntfs_subr.c ntfs_subr.h ntfs_vfsops.c ntfs_vfsops.h ntfs_vnops.c ntfsmount.h What am I doing wrong? -- Dmitrij D. Czarkoff
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On 18 Jun, 2010, at 11:38 AM, Peter N. M. Hansteen wrote: The only thing I've pretty much given up on is flash. No big loss since removing the flashplayer plugin means firefox will crash slightly less often and you're spared a lot of the less useful ads. Slightly? I can't think of the last time I had a browser crash that didn't involve Flash... -- Casey Allen Shobe ca...@shobe.info
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Hi, I would state this even stronger :-) I had a friend give me a Dell Precision M70 which, under XP was beyond useless, and under OpenBSD 4.7 it just flies. Very very very nice. From my POV, it is perfect and works perfectly. Do note, my definition of perfect and your definition of perfect might not be the same... Ie, I think that cwm is the best of all worlds for window managers, an opinion not necessarly shared by the rest of the world. When you get away from the OS that came with the system, you run the risk that not all the devices will work quite as well as they worked with the factory standard OS. That said, you get an OS that is far nicer. cheers bruce On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 06:26:33AM -0500, Chris Bennett wrote: Jean-Francois wrote: Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Thanks The other comment about reading the FAQ is right. However, there are no comments on experiences in the FAQ. OpenBSD will take an older laptop that crawls under Windows and make it pleasantly useful.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Fri, 18 Jun 2010, Jacob Meuser wrote: yeah, greasemonkey + youtube without flash auto is *way* better than swfdec or gnash for watching/downloading videos. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771 Really? This never worked for me, it aways ended up in: HQTube needs updating, it is no longer compatible. -- Antoine
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 08:57:07AM +0200, Antoine Jacoutot wrote: On Fri, 18 Jun 2010, Jacob Meuser wrote: yeah, greasemonkey + youtube without flash auto is *way* better than swfdec or gnash for watching/downloading videos. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771 Really? This never worked for me, it aways ended up in: HQTube needs updating, it is no longer compatible. that's not hqtube ... -- jake...@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Sat, 19 Jun 2010, Jacob Meuser wrote: On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 08:57:07AM +0200, Antoine Jacoutot wrote: On Fri, 18 Jun 2010, Jacob Meuser wrote: yeah, greasemonkey + youtube without flash auto is *way* better than swfdec or gnash for watching/downloading videos. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771 Really? This never worked for me, it aways ended up in: HQTube needs updating, it is no longer compatible. that's not hqtube ... AHAHAHA, I'm so stupid... thanks. -- Antoine
OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Thanks
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
There is a nice thing called FAQ. It's MUST READ for everyone on any OS before start. And you can find things like this one http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq1.html#Desktop inside. On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Jean-Francois jfsimon1...@gmail.com wrote: Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Thanks
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Search the archives.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Jean-Francois wrote: Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Thanks The other comment about reading the FAQ is right. However, there are no comments on experiences in the FAQ. OpenBSD will take an older laptop that crawls under Windows and make it pleasantly useful.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
See FAQ http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq1.html#Desktop I've been using OpenBSD (mostly on laptops) as my primary work station for eight years. I'm a software developer, and I don't do sound or video as part of my work. Also, I don't have any use for NTFS. Andreas On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 01:59:22PM +0200, Jean-Francois wrote: Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Thanks -- Andreas Kdhdri, Ensembl Software Developer European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton Cambridge CB10 1SD, United Kingdom
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Simple answer: it can. I'm using OpenBSD as a desktop OS for my T40 and I'm able to do anything I need. 2010/6/18 Jussi Peltola pe...@pelzi.net Search the archives.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Jean-Francois wrote: Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. I thought from your previous postings you already do all this and more. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... It is perfect for everything, except your mileage may vary based on what you mean by multimedia, pciture video, etc. My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Its great! Works very well on my laptops and netbooks and desktops. Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? Not part of the base install. You have to build a custom kernel and I believe it is experimental and read only. I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Go for it :) Thanks -- Vijay Sankar, M.Eng., P.Eng. ForeTell Technologies Limited 59 Flamingo Avenue, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3J 0X6 Phone: (204) 885-9535, E-Mail: vsan...@foretell.ca
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Chris Bennett ch...@bennettconstruction.biz writes: OpenBSD will take an older laptop that crawls under Windows and make it pleasantly useful. And it will make even newer laptops more useful to some of us. The only thing I've pretty much given up on is flash. No big loss since removing the flashplayer plugin means firefox will crash slightly less often and you're spared a lot of the less useful ads. -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.bsdly.net/ http://www.nuug.no/ Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
OpenBSD is absolutely fine for browser, mail and pictures. Once you install gnome, the GUI will generally be the same as most other gnome desktops. Flash and NTFS are sticking points. Neither work particularly well. I've had variable experiences with VLC for video - it lost sync on earlier releases of OpenBSD and VLC but may have improved. Really, the easiest way is just to try it out! You could always dual boot if not sure. Peter
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Peter Kay syllops...@syllopsium.co.uk wrote: I've had variable experiences with VLC for video - it lost sync on earlier releases of OpenBSD and VLC but may have improved. Best part about VLC issues is that - you can use mplayer! And if you mplayer issues, you can use... VLC! Heh. -- http://www.glumbert.com/media/shift http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk This officer's men seem to follow him merely out of idle curiosity. -- Sandhurst officer cadet evaluation. Securing an environment of Windows platforms from abuse - external or internal - is akin to trying to install sprinklers in a fireworks factory where smoking on the job is permitted. -- Gene Spafford learn french: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30v_g83VHK4
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... There is software for multimedia manipulation that run on OpenBSD. See if they are good for you. My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? I use OpenBSD exclusively as an desktop and I can do everything I want.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
The only thing I've pretty much given up on is flash. No big loss since removing the flashplayer plugin means firefox will crash slightly less often and you're spared a lot of the less useful ads. Well, one can still try Gnash or Swfdec. If one just wants to see videos on Youtube, one can still use sites such as tinyogg and pwnyoutube to download the video and forget about flash. That's my method.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 4:04 PM, VICTOR TARABOLA CORTIANO vt...@c3sl.ufpr.br wrote: My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? I use OpenBSD exclusively as an desktop and I can do everything I want. Same here. OpenBSD makes for a very stable and capable desktop.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
VICTOR TARABOLA CORTIANO wrote: The only thing I've pretty much given up on is flash. No big loss since removing the flashplayer plugin means firefox will crash slightly less often and you're spared a lot of the less useful ads. Well, one can still try Gnash or Swfdec. If one just wants to see videos on Youtube, one can still use sites such as tinyogg and pwnyoutube to download the video and forget about flash. That's my method. And yt or youtube-dl from ports. Also, the greasmonkey scripts or whatever for firefox work great for youtube, vimeo and a few others.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 02:31:52PM -0700, Noah Pugsley wrote: VICTOR TARABOLA CORTIANO wrote: The only thing I've pretty much given up on is flash. No big loss since removing the flashplayer plugin means firefox will crash slightly less often and you're spared a lot of the less useful ads. Well, one can still try Gnash or Swfdec. If one just wants to see videos on Youtube, one can still use sites such as tinyogg and pwnyoutube to download the video and forget about flash. That's my method. And yt or youtube-dl from ports. Also, the greasmonkey scripts or whatever for firefox work great for youtube, vimeo and a few others. yeah, greasemonkey + youtube without flash auto is *way* better than swfdec or gnash for watching/downloading videos. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771 -- jake...@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
Video playback is where I've had the most problems. NTFS support is read only so as long as you're not dual booting I don't see this as a problem. Setting it up for the first time was a PITA but a good learning experience though. On Fri, 2010-06-18 at 13:59 +0200, Jean-Francois wrote: Hello All, I am thinking about changing my OS to OpenBSD on my laptop, which is standard x86. It would be used as internet browser, mail client, multimedia, pciture video , etc ... My question is simple, is OpenBSD convenient enough for a daily usage ? What are the experiences about that ? Just to be sure, as of today, is ntfs experimental or working, or not ? for read ? for r/w ? I will certainly do with gnome wm. I know such question might not be very convenient to answer, this is just to be sure I can peacefully back-up my data and reinstall freshly without worrying about anything but being using a great os. Thanks
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:12:44PM +, Jacob Meuser wrote: And yt or youtube-dl from ports. Also, the greasmonkey scripts or whatever for firefox work great for youtube, vimeo and a few others. yeah, greasemonkey + youtube without flash auto is *way* better than swfdec or gnash for watching/downloading videos. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771 These prepackaged choices (yt, youtube-dl, and the greasemonkey script) are all a little too bloated for my taste. Did you notice that the youtube-dl script http://bitbucket.org/rg3/youtube-dl/src/tip/youtube-dl is over 2000 lines long! That's longer than the Surf web browser (which is under 1000 lines). http://hg.suckless.org/surf/file/e83fbd17d63a/surf.c I would rather maintain my own 4 line shell script for downloading youtube videos: sed -n 's/[^v]*v.\([^'\'']*\).*/curl '\''http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/ge'\ 't_video_info?video_id=\1'\'' ; echo/p' | sh | sed -n 's/.*video_id=\'\ '([^'\'']*\).*token=\([^%'\'']*\).*/curl -L -o '\''\1.mp4'\'' '\''ht'\ 'tp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/get_video?video_id=\1\t=\2=\fmt=18'\''/p' | sh The script takes URLs for youtube videos as standard input (one per line), and downloads the mp4 files. And if it doesn't do exactly what I need, then I customize it. Understanding youtube's API is easier than depending on somebody else's code, in my opinion.
Re: OpenBSD as a laptop OS
On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 12:06:00AM +, Matthew Szudzik wrote: On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:12:44PM +, Jacob Meuser wrote: And yt or youtube-dl from ports. Also, the greasmonkey scripts or whatever for firefox work great for youtube, vimeo and a few others. yeah, greasemonkey + youtube without flash auto is *way* better than swfdec or gnash for watching/downloading videos. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771 These prepackaged choices (yt, youtube-dl, and the greasemonkey script) are all a little too bloated for my taste. Did you notice that the youtube-dl script http://bitbucket.org/rg3/youtube-dl/src/tip/youtube-dl is over 2000 lines long! That's longer than the Surf web browser (which is under 1000 lines). http://hg.suckless.org/surf/file/e83fbd17d63a/surf.c I would rather maintain my own 4 line shell script for downloading youtube videos: sed -n 's/[^v]*v.\([^'\'']*\).*/curl '\''http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/ge'\ 't_video_info?video_id=\1'\'' ; echo/p' | sh | sed -n 's/.*video_id=\'\ '([^'\'']*\).*token=\([^%'\'']*\).*/curl -L -o '\''\1.mp4'\'' '\''ht'\ 'tp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/get_video?video_id=\1\t=\2=\fmt=18'\''/p' | sh The script takes URLs for youtube videos as standard input (one per line), and downloads the mp4 files. And if it doesn't do exactly what I need, then I customize it. Understanding youtube's API is easier than depending on somebody else's code, in my opinion. perhaps, but clicking on buttons and seeing the video in the browser (and having seeking and fullscreen controls, as well as choices for which version of the video in there as well) is pretty convenient. -- jake...@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
