I would like to share, maybe not the newest, but partly informative and sometimes fascinating, experience installing on a laptop an operating system not from the mainstream (i.e. not Windows or Linux ) for at least some full-time work in our (corrupted) time . It all started with the fact that it was evening and there was nothing to do, and then again something began to heat up my MacBook . So I decided to put on it (well, not really on it, of course - after all, I still have to work on it - but on an older model, which for some time has simply been lying in the drawer) something warm from the BSD world . Not FreeBSD , it would be simple, but, for example, NetBSD (I really like her for her minimalism).A completely minor remarkFreeBSD 10 . BenQ Joybook X31. KDE , , . RTL8168 .
At first I decided to read on your internet, because for sure someone already tried to do this. And it turned out, tried and even did. Not with NetBSD or MacBook , but interesting as well. I’ll tell you about this not my experience now. Next will be the translation and I will no longer be me, but Jan-Piet Mens.So the question is: is it possible to make a laptop so attractive that you want to switch to it from a Mac ? TL DR: you can [ transl .: but I would argue ].In 1989, I spent entire weeks of my life trying to compile and run X11 on Compaq 486 under SCO Unix . The compilation itself took many hours. But the most memorable thing is the need to cross your fingers in the hope that the screen settings will not damage the monitor. Times, of course, are changing, and I think that now few continue to suffer from such garbage. Fortunately, I forgot most of the problems of that time. But even now, when I think of a (non-profit) Unix on a laptop, I see the ghost of RAMDAC in my nightmares.I know many users of various GNU / Linux distributions (or systemd / Linux? ;-) working on laptops. I also tried installing it, even without X11 . But Linux could not push me away from the Mac . I don’t know exactly why. Linux is fast enough (probably faster than BSD systems) and reliable enough, but that's not all. I think that the point is the growing rejection of the system and documentation, administration and utilities, the implementation of systemd, the differences between distributions. There is a feeling that so many problems here are only due to the fact that different development teams are working on the same thing, fixing and introducing the same mistakes back. This is not mine. Linux is good, of course, but I don’t feel part of its community.And at the beginning of February I got an idea that got some response:I quit smoking 922 days ago (at the time of writing [ translation: original ] of this note, and yes, I still continue to count the days). Counting the money that I was able to save on this, I forked out for the purchase of the 6th generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon . And I was really surprised when I opened a cardboard box - quite a “apple-like” appearance.Inside, it turned out to be a great device, I think it’s even thinner than my MacBook Air , and the X1 feels lighter. First of all, I decided to reduce the space occupied by Windows 10 (who knows, maybe it will come in handy someday), but changed my mind after waiting several minutes for the Windows Welcome screen to load .At first I decided to installFreeBSD , because it supports ZFS and allows you to run VirtualBox . I started installing the latest version of TrueOS [ trans .: previously PC-BSD ], because the installation process should be obvious even to noobs. Installation went fine until I started adding a user (named jpm). The installer informed me that Jan-Piet Mens contains invalid characters. In the GECOS field . I am not kidding. The result was a bootable system (from the second attempt), which brought me almost to tears with its slowness. Then I installed Trident ( TrueOS branch) In this case, it was necessary to connect a USB mouse for a graphical installation program. The result is a non-bootable system; not loaded as in this meme:Of course, I had to try installing just FreeBSD , which I did. Repeatedly. And then I stopped trying. I threw over and over again the unfortunate X1 because of the inability in this state to give it to those who need a laptop with Windows .Henrik (he is indefatigable in that sense) proposed OpenBSD , so I tried it. Honestly, my expectations in terms of “laptop, and graphics, and Wi-Fi and all that with OpenBSD ” are nowhere to go. OpenBSD on the server? You're welcome. But on a laptop? ..Recently, I like OpenBSD- the installation is simple and fast, the standard software is quite stable, and the documentation is almost perfect. Imagine how great it is to be able to type the man command and get help with the current description of the program or service file on your computer? I had a wonderful experience with OpenBSD a year ago when I installed this OS on my old Thinkpad .The installation went through, and I got more than I expected (which surprised me to death). But the result was terrible - Firefox could hardly scroll through the pages, no video on Youtube , a dull window manager ... I went to bed to read a book for the night.Again Henrik (yes, the same guy) pointed me to Cullum Smith's post “OpenBSDon the laptop . " After spending an hour or two setting up on this note, I got a fully functional working environment with an i3-like window manager cwm [ transl . : rus. ] .In general, the result was a laptop that can (for me) compete with the Mac , at least in most cases. It is configured with full disk encryption, operable Ethernet and Wi-Fi (imagine the possibility of running man iwm to display the latest documentation with examples). S3 works just like the volume buttons. There is a development environment (C compiler with all Unix utilities that I could only dream of). Installed syncthing ,restic and matterhorn . Configured and working full-time for the OpenBSD services httpd and smtpd . The first is because I sometimes do testing and I need an HTTP server, and the second - because I like to send letters to myself and others.At the end of this first day, there is still something that needs to be addressed. VLC plays sound but does not show video using the X11 driver (video works in Firefox and Chrome ). And something is missing for convenience, like copying / pasting between xterm and the browser.Also, the right side of the laptop is very hot; I do not know where the processor is located, but I believe that it is there (although top does not show anything special). It turned out to be setting up Thunderbolt in the BIOS .It is really nice to work on a system in which, when I want to install mosquitto , all I have to do is:pkg_add mosquitto
and I will get all the libraries, executables and headers without having to figure out what the packages with executables and libraries are called. (I look at Debian .) Everything is properly documented, there are man pages for all programs and service files, and the quality of the manuals is very good.I have not finished the setup yet and I'm not sure that I can refuse Mac and macOS , but so far everything looks promising. Something important to me will be difficult or impossible to replace or configure, for example:- iTerm2 ;
- Enpass ;
- Calendar.app;
- request for connection to Wi-Fi networks;
- instant wake up when you open the lid of the laptop.
There may be similar solutions for some or all of the requirements, but only really similar ones. In general, I am satisfied with the result so far. Probably a properly configured Linux laptop would be just as good, if not better. But as I said, this is not mine.Do I dare to take this car to BSDCan [ trans .: BSD conference in Canada ] and make a presentation with it? We will see. (Of course not, if I cannot pre-practice the projector.)Three weeks later
Three weeks later, I almost never used a laptop. I took it into consideration with the following comments:- Wi-Fi stops working after about an hour with a bunch of driver error messages every minute in syslog. Someone suggested I replace the Wi-Fi controller.
- HDMI , . xrandr?
- 6.4 6.5 . , , iwm0.
- xrandr, . . HDMI HP. . , .
- (Otto) -current snapshot, . . , pkg_add , , libreoffice. - — xrandr. HDMI ( ).
- , iwm0, em0. em0 Wi-Fi .