[xasop]

I've been looking for a decent laptop that can run OpenBSD (recent Chromebooks are nice in terms of battery life, but suck at hardware support from anything but ChromeOS). I trawled the OpenBSD mailing list archives a bit, and found that the Lenovo ThinkPad X201 is supposed to be very reliable and well-supported, as well as being fairly small and light. It's a bit old, so it's not exceptionally lightweight by modern standards, but I can live with that.

I found and bought an X201 on eBay for $300. Bargain, considering the reputation this laptop has for reliability on the 'net. I can't wait to get my hands on it and install OpenBSD.

Meanwhile, my recent PC Case Gear order has been delayed by a lack of the SATA cables I ordered. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise, as I can now request an additional SSD to be added to the order for my new laptop, to replace its HDD.

At the moment, I'm mostly considering an Intel 530 Series 120 GB model. I won't use more than 120 GB on a laptop, and the X201 is old enough that it doesn't support SATA 3, so capacity and performance aren't worthy considerations. On the other hand, that Intel SSD has very lower power consumption (fuck yeah battery life), as well as a 5-year warranty (I care more about drives failing in laptops than in desktops, because I might be travelling with no access to backups when it happens).

I'll think about it some more and add an SSD to that order later today or tomorrow. Meanwhile, feel free to post suggestions.

[xasop]

Actually, I might just spend the little extra and get a 128 GB Samsung 850 Pro instead. It's lighter, has a 10-year warranty, and closer inspection of Intel's documentation suggests that their stated power values are measured significantly differently from Samsung's, to the point of putting power consumption on par.

[xasop]

Actually, I might just spend the little extra and get a 128 GB Samsung 850 Pro instead. It's lighter, has a 10-year warranty, and closer inspection of Intel's documentation suggests that their stated power values are measured significantly differently from Samsung's, to the point of putting power consumption on par.

Done and done. I was tempted to get a bigger SSD for teh lulz, but it would have been a completely ridiculous decision because I don't like carrying around large volumes of data on a portable computer; it's a hassle to make sure I have regular backups of all of it.

January 2015 is going to be so kickass with all these new gadgets.

[xasop]

I just bought a 9-cell battery to replace the 6-cell in my new laptop. This is going to be so great.

[Thork]

A quadruple post. Good etiquette. 

[Ghost of V]

A quadruple post. Good etiquette. 

Quadruple post usually implies duplicates. Each post contains different information so I don't see what the problem is here.

[xasop]

It has arrived, with a 9-cell battery after all. I guess I have a spare.

I'm just waiting for my SSD to get here, which should happen today, and then I can install OpenBSD.

[Vindictus]

Postal services are still working NYE?

[xasop]

Postal services are still working NYE?

According to Australia Post's tracker thing, my PC Case Gear order will be delivered today. Let's see if that actually happens.

[Pete Svarrior]

Postal services are still working NYE?

According to Australia Post's tracker thing, my PC Case Gear order will be delivered today. Let's see if that actually happens.

inb4 no

[xasop]

It got here, and I've put it in the laptop and installed OpenBSD. It is great.

[xasop]

This laptop + OpenBSD is just fantastic. It cleanly suspends and resumes when I close and open the lid, no messy loose ends lying around afterwards, which is something I'm just not used to from Linux. I even wanted it to auto-lock the screen on suspend, so I dropped a four-line shell script into /etc/apm/suspend to run xlock, and it just fucking works. This is so much better than old-school Linux, and so much easier to configure than systemd. The trade-off is a loss of some amount of flexibility, but with source code as clean and easy to modify as OpenBSD's, who cares if it doesn't do what you want out of the box?

[xasop]

First post from the new laptop.

I'm really, really enjoying OpenBSD. Everything is so simple and easy to use. I've started working on a modified version of this wireless script that is capable of scanning for and auto-detecting the best available network.

In order to use this capability, I have netstart(8) configured to run it on boot:

Code: (/etc/hostname.iwn0) [Select]

!/usr/local/sbin/wireless --auto
rtsol

I also have apmd(8) configured to run it when resuming from sleep:

Code: (/etc/apm/resume) [Select]

#!/bin/sh

/usr/local/sbin/wireless --auto | logger -t wireless

And I've configured my window manager, i3, to reconfigure the network automatically when I press Super+N:

Code: (/home/steven/.i3/config) [Select]

bindsym $mod+n exec /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/sudo /usr/local/sbin/wireless --auto | /usr/bin/logger -t wireless"

This is so much nicer than the overcomplicated network management bloatware found on every other OS I've ever tried. That other approach inevitably gets what I want wrong, and then I have to waste hours trying to figure out why it's not smarter than me when it seems to be designed like it should be. This shit just works, and I know exactly how it works because it's incredibly simple.

[xasop]

I also have apmd(8) configured to run it when resuming from sleep:

Code: (/etc/apm/resume) [Select]

#!/bin/sh

/usr/local/sbin/wireless --auto | logger -t wireless


This will have its first real test coming up soon. I've configured my phone to share its Internet connection via WiFi, and configured that as one of the wireless networks on my laptop. When I open up my laptop lid on the bus, it should resume from sleep, run this script and automatically start using my phone's Internet connection.

[xasop]

I also have apmd(8) configured to run it when resuming from sleep:

Code: (/etc/apm/resume) [Select]

#!/bin/sh

/usr/local/sbin/wireless --auto | logger -t wireless


This will have its first real test coming up soon. I've configured my phone to share its Internet connection via WiFi, and configured that as one of the wireless networks on my laptop. When I open up my laptop lid on the bus, it should resume from sleep, run this script and automatically start using my phone's Internet connection.

Well, that works as far as the laptop goes. My phone seems to turn off its WiFi hotspot after around 5 minutes of inactivity, so I'll have to see what I can do about that. Maybe I can trigger a WiFi activation over Bluetooth, or just use Bluetooth instead of WiFi.