With the recent release of OpenBSD 7.5, I decided to run through my personal OpenBSD “installer” for laptop/desktop devices. The project is built off of the
dwmtiling window manager and only installs a few basic packages. The last time I updated it was with the release of 7.3, so it’s been due for an minor rework.While making these minor changes, I remembered how incredibly easy the entire install process for OpenBSD is and how cozy the entire operating system feels. All the core systems just work out the box. Yes, you need to “patch” in WiFi with a firmware update, so you’ll need an Ethernet connection during the initial setup. Yes, the default desktop environment is not intuitive or ideal for newcomers.
But the positives heavily outweigh the negatives (in my opinion).
↫ Bradley Taunt
OpenBSD has a very dedicated community, and I’ve noticed they tend to be very helpful and friendly. It’s making me curious about trying it out, and both this article and the helpful posts it links to will be a great way to start.
You really should! Be warned though, dwm is one of those “build it yourself” minimal window managers that you’ve mentioned you aren’t a fan of. I suggest following this guide for installation, but when it comes time to install a desktop, give Xfce a try. In my experience it’s the most polished and complete desktop for OpenBSD at this time, until KDE Plasma is ready. You can install Xfce with:
pkg_add xfce xfce-extras xdg-user-dirs consolekit2
Along with any other software you want. After installing you’ll need to create a .xsession file in your user directory with the following contents:
exec ck-launch-session startxfce4
It’s pretty much a complete and working Xfce session, though note that the way OpenBSD handles things like touchpads, screen dimming, and battery management are done through the OS itself rather than the desktop environment’s controls. The great thing about OpenBSD though is that it’s all covered extensively in the man pages. Happy hacking, Thom!
My video tutorial “Install OpenBSD 7.5 and KDE Plasma 5 in QEMU VM tutorial for beginners” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSXWlE0w-ow
Yes, give OpenBSD a try on that ThinkPad.
It is much more polished than most minimalist or DIY Linux distributions.
You can run a base system with a browser and cwm. Or go all out and install a full desktop environment.
It’s hard to switch back to Linux afterward.
Xfce is well supported.
I ran that and LXQt.
By necessity, every software package for OpenBSD is free open source software.