That looks exactly like how I’d imagine an OpenBSD’s work space to look: Minimal, classy, entirely beautiful.
My own desk is always a hopeless messy jumble, and has been my whole life. I don’t know when I realized that clutter was actively comfortable, but it is.
I earnestly believe that this aesthetic simplicity & physical utilitarianism can be accessed with intentionality by learning to “think in OpenBSD” (similar to the titular character’s experience from the novel Ender’s Game, or as in the film Arrival); it could be something you or anyone else can aspire to emulate via your neuroplasticity and the daily effect of using this operating system.
I’d love to see this studied as robustly as we’ve studied the effects of color in brand identities. I imagine OpenBSD to be the “IBM blue” of OS aesthetics.
Whatever else you believe about OpenBSD and the alternative more popular desktop operating systems, it would be hard to dispute that OpenBSD disproportionately pursues a calm “internal coherency” given the project’s approach to normalized coding style, a smaller team of opinionated contributors, complete man pages distributed with the system as a single “source of truth”, the absence of bells and whistles that trigger the frailties of your mammalian brain, and an ethos approximating the original Thompson & Ritchie style Unix philosophy.
Or you can be the person who, when someone asks “do you have X?”, reaches into a pile and unerringly finds it. Or sometimes says “No, but I know of something better.” It takes all sorts.
I’ve been eyeing it too for a while now; ever since I saw it on fabiensanglard.net. I picked up an M1 MacBook Air late last year to play around with powerful ARM hardware though, so it’ll be a while before I can justify another expensive machine.
I wonder if it could dissipate the heat from a POWER9 chip/motherboard…
Same! Most ergonomics guides I’ve read advise you to position your monitor with the top edge roughly at eye level. (“Eye level” as you’re looking straight in front of you, not hunched over.) Having a monitor on an adjustable arm is generally one of the big advantages of not using a laptop!
the LG UltraFine exposes a USB HID device to control its brightness
huh, that’s interesting. Usually brightness is controlled over DDC/CI on DisplayPort monitors.
As for my mouse, I’m not a gamer so I don’t need something with 35 buttons on it
35 button mice are not the most common gaming mice, btw. They are specifically made for MMO players (though I’ve heard of a GTA speedrunner leveraging those too, heh). For FPS players, the mouse looks pretty normal – the important things are having a great sensor, minimum latency, good ergonomics. Non-gaming mice are often just bad in terms of all that. Speaking of:
I recently switched to a Logitech M355
Ouch, this shape looks painfully unergonomic. About as bad as the Apple Magic Mouse. Maybe somewhat better because the front is slightly raised up.
Not sure if it’s been posted elsewhere, but I would be interested in seeing a /r/unixporn-like post from jcs. Rare to see an openbsd rice and this one looks cool from the shown pictures.
This particular version of the LG UltraFine is no longer being produced
Which is a shame, since I’m unaware of any other monitor that has such a high DPI and works on non-Apple products. I’ve basically given up on one ever existing, and am now hoping to pick up a 27in 4K 120Hz monitor to run at 1.5x scaling since it’s probably the best I’ll be able to manage for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping Microsoft finally introduces a Surface monitor!
I was also looking recently and it is terribly difficult to find anything. 16:9, 16:10 or ultra wide, the best you can hope seems to be 1.5x. The LG UltraFine 24MD4KL that is quoted in the article is quite expensive. It does not come with a tin bezel and only provides USB-C. AFAIK, this is the only current option to get 200 ppi.
Slightly off-topic, but if we’re talking about fanless systems this crowd seemed like it might have some folks who could give good recommendations:
My NAS currently has an AMD E-350, which is not 10 years old. It’s a dual-core 1.6 GHz low-power system and is now noticeably slow. I’d like a faster CPU and motherboard that can fit in the mini-ITX case (I think the PSU is around 100W, maybe a bit less, but it’s mostly just powering the motherboard and three disks, occasionally some fairly low-power USB things). 6 SATA connections would be ideal, 4 is okay. An m2 slot that can fit an NVMe drive would be nice and I’d like it to support 32-64 GiB of RAM (I don’t want to upgrade it again for another decade!).
I’m currently leaning towards the ASRock J5040-ITX (allegedly it doesn’t support more than 16 GiB of RAM, but mini-itx.com is willing to sell it with 64 GiB of RAM and a guarantee that it works). Single-threaded performance appears to be about three times the current CPU, it has twice as many cores, and it consumes less power. It’s not quite ideal (I’d prefer ECC memory, more SATA channels, and for the M2 is a variant that I can’t use for an SSD), so I’d welcome any better suggestions.
ASRock has the X570D4I-2T, which is an AM4 socket ITX mobo that will take the 3200G and 3400G. Four SODIMM slots and two OCULINK connectors which can feed 8 SATA3 drives, plus the M.2 is a PCIe4 x4 just like you want.
Thanks for the suggestion. The current CPU is an 18W part, it looks as if the lowest-power things that board supports are 35W (the 3200G and 3400G are 65W). I’m not sure the PSU will handle that much load. It’s rated at 120W, but that’s not including any losses (there’s an external power brick and an internal power distribution board) and the fact that it’s now a decade old. It might be okay - the disks are probably around 5W each, not sure what the RAM or case fans consume. I don’t think there’s space in the case for a CPU fan though and all of those parts look as if they need active cooling.
Given the number of upvotes, I’d say your desktop has a lot of fans…
That looks exactly like how I’d imagine an OpenBSD’s work space to look: Minimal, classy, entirely beautiful.
My own desk is always a hopeless messy jumble, and has been my whole life. I don’t know when I realized that clutter was actively comfortable, but it is.
I earnestly believe that this aesthetic simplicity & physical utilitarianism can be accessed with intentionality by learning to “think in OpenBSD” (similar to the titular character’s experience from the novel Ender’s Game, or as in the film Arrival); it could be something you or anyone else can aspire to emulate via your neuroplasticity and the daily effect of using this operating system.
I’d love to see this studied as robustly as we’ve studied the effects of color in brand identities. I imagine OpenBSD to be the “IBM blue” of OS aesthetics.
Whatever else you believe about OpenBSD and the alternative more popular desktop operating systems, it would be hard to dispute that OpenBSD disproportionately pursues a calm “internal coherency” given the project’s approach to normalized coding style, a smaller team of opinionated contributors, complete man pages distributed with the system as a single “source of truth”, the absence of bells and whistles that trigger the frailties of your mammalian brain, and an ethos approximating the original Thompson & Ritchie style Unix philosophy.
Or you can be the person who, when someone asks “do you have X?”, reaches into a pile and unerringly finds it. Or sometimes says “No, but I know of something better.” It takes all sorts.
That is gorgeous. I hope to, one day, justify a $400 computer case.
It is a beautiful case though
I’ve been eyeing it too for a while now; ever since I saw it on fabiensanglard.net. I picked up an M1 MacBook Air late last year to play around with powerful ARM hardware though, so it’ll be a while before I can justify another expensive machine.
I wonder if it could dissipate the heat from a POWER9 chip/motherboard…
This is a great writeup of an interesting and attractive build, but looking at that low laptop-like monitor position is making my neck ache… 🙂
Same! Most ergonomics guides I’ve read advise you to position your monitor with the top edge roughly at eye level. (“Eye level” as you’re looking straight in front of you, not hunched over.) Having a monitor on an adjustable arm is generally one of the big advantages of not using a laptop!
I think the wide-angle photo of my desk made it look like the monitor was much more reclined than it is. Here’s a side photo.
would be nice if you could share your window manager config. please ?
Probably in here; https://github.com/jcs/dotfiles
Nope, I got it right at the first photo. It looks as painfully reclined as in the first set of pics.
huh, that’s interesting. Usually brightness is controlled over DDC/CI on DisplayPort monitors.
35 button mice are not the most common gaming mice, btw. They are specifically made for MMO players (though I’ve heard of a GTA speedrunner leveraging those too, heh). For FPS players, the mouse looks pretty normal – the important things are having a great sensor, minimum latency, good ergonomics. Non-gaming mice are often just bad in terms of all that. Speaking of:
Ouch, this shape looks painfully unergonomic. About as bad as the Apple Magic Mouse. Maybe somewhat better because the front is slightly raised up.
Yes. For example, the Logitech G305 is quite nice. Good battery life. There is a cord version if you don’t mind to have a bit of RGB.
G603/G703 is my favorite shape, but wow, that G305 has awesome color options!
I sure wish I could buy a reasonably powerful but fanless / low power ARM system. Something like an Intel NUC but without the Intel inside.
Not sure if it’s been posted elsewhere, but I would be interested in seeing a /r/unixporn-like post from jcs. Rare to see an openbsd rice and this one looks cool from the shown pictures.
The viewing angle for that monitor seems unpleasant. It looks fantastic, but my neck hurts just looking at it
Which is a shame, since I’m unaware of any other monitor that has such a high DPI and works on non-Apple products. I’ve basically given up on one ever existing, and am now hoping to pick up a 27in 4K 120Hz monitor to run at 1.5x scaling since it’s probably the best I’ll be able to manage for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping Microsoft finally introduces a Surface monitor!
I was also looking recently and it is terribly difficult to find anything. 16:9, 16:10 or ultra wide, the best you can hope seems to be 1.5x. The LG UltraFine 24MD4KL that is quoted in the article is quite expensive. It does not come with a tin bezel and only provides USB-C. AFAIK, this is the only current option to get 200 ppi.
I have a 28” 16:9 4K, started out at 1.5x but switched to 2x. Honestly it’s fine, it’s not as comically big as you’d think at first.
Slightly off-topic, but if we’re talking about fanless systems this crowd seemed like it might have some folks who could give good recommendations:
My NAS currently has an AMD E-350, which is not 10 years old. It’s a dual-core 1.6 GHz low-power system and is now noticeably slow. I’d like a faster CPU and motherboard that can fit in the mini-ITX case (I think the PSU is around 100W, maybe a bit less, but it’s mostly just powering the motherboard and three disks, occasionally some fairly low-power USB things). 6 SATA connections would be ideal, 4 is okay. An m2 slot that can fit an NVMe drive would be nice and I’d like it to support 32-64 GiB of RAM (I don’t want to upgrade it again for another decade!).
I’m currently leaning towards the ASRock J5040-ITX (allegedly it doesn’t support more than 16 GiB of RAM, but mini-itx.com is willing to sell it with 64 GiB of RAM and a guarantee that it works). Single-threaded performance appears to be about three times the current CPU, it has twice as many cores, and it consumes less power. It’s not quite ideal (I’d prefer ECC memory, more SATA channels, and for the M2 is a variant that I can’t use for an SSD), so I’d welcome any better suggestions.
ASRock has the X570D4I-2T, which is an AM4 socket ITX mobo that will take the 3200G and 3400G. Four SODIMM slots and two OCULINK connectors which can feed 8 SATA3 drives, plus the M.2 is a PCIe4 x4 just like you want.
I haven’t used it, myself.
Thanks for the suggestion. The current CPU is an 18W part, it looks as if the lowest-power things that board supports are 35W (the 3200G and 3400G are 65W). I’m not sure the PSU will handle that much load. It’s rated at 120W, but that’s not including any losses (there’s an external power brick and an internal power distribution board) and the fact that it’s now a decade old. It might be okay - the disks are probably around 5W each, not sure what the RAM or case fans consume. I don’t think there’s space in the case for a CPU fan though and all of those parts look as if they need active cooling.
I’m using the (presumably slower) ASRock J4105-ITX and I’m very happy with it.
I have the same keyboard, just got it a few weeks ago. It’s a great entry level keyboard that you can swap switches at any time.