I can only wonder if “the complete idiot” refers to the person who would actually run OpenBSD on a Pinebook Pro :)
I remember reading about the state of this exact setup a few years ago, and I’m a little sad to see that it hasn’t come further. Some of the stuff the blog post mentions are quite basic, like powering off the device, or suspend/resume.
This makes such a setup completely unusable for any serious activity.
It’s my guide, so I’m the complete idiot, no question at all :)
My (perhaps naive) hope is that this writeup might help more people get into this (it’s the guide I would have loved when I started figuring out all the bits and pieces, and it would have spared me a lot of time). So maybe the number of people looking at the issues will increase. I would (also naively) assume that since the hardware is (supposed to be) open, adding support for the missing stuff, at least for the small-ish ones, should not be difficult. But it definitely takes knowledgeable developers, and I imagine they have better things to do (I know I have).
Whether it’s usable or not, serious or not, I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder. I like it, it’s quite snappy with a tiling WM, and I enjoy the bloat-free experience of OpenBSD. Here’s hoping that it improves.
I guess I’m just a little bit disillusioned with the state of things. I’m glad that you are pushing the agenda with detailed write ups like these. Here’s to hoping that things improve!
Apparently the keyboard does not work when the boot process asks for the password of an encrypted disk. For what it’s worth, one can work around it by using keydisks.
However, the second problem of suboptimal performance of an FDE system would still persist.
I don’t want to speak on behalf of OpenBSD developers, but personally I would not hold my breath for Wayland, given that a) they maintain their own port of X called xenocara, and b) desktop is not the main point or focus of OpenBSD.
Tom, kudos on the article! It has great level of details AND clarity. You definitely have a knack for this. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you!
I can only wonder if “the complete idiot” refers to the person who would actually run OpenBSD on a Pinebook Pro :)
I remember reading about the state of this exact setup a few years ago, and I’m a little sad to see that it hasn’t come further. Some of the stuff the blog post mentions are quite basic, like powering off the device, or suspend/resume.
This makes such a setup completely unusable for any serious activity.
A shame really.
It’s my guide, so I’m the complete idiot, no question at all :)
My (perhaps naive) hope is that this writeup might help more people get into this (it’s the guide I would have loved when I started figuring out all the bits and pieces, and it would have spared me a lot of time). So maybe the number of people looking at the issues will increase. I would (also naively) assume that since the hardware is (supposed to be) open, adding support for the missing stuff, at least for the small-ish ones, should not be difficult. But it definitely takes knowledgeable developers, and I imagine they have better things to do (I know I have).
Whether it’s usable or not, serious or not, I guess it’s in the eye of the beholder. I like it, it’s quite snappy with a tiling WM, and I enjoy the bloat-free experience of OpenBSD. Here’s hoping that it improves.
Thanks for replying!
I guess I’m just a little bit disillusioned with the state of things. I’m glad that you are pushing the agenda with detailed write ups like these. Here’s to hoping that things improve!
Apparently the keyboard does not work when the boot process asks for the password of an encrypted disk. For what it’s worth, one can work around it by using keydisks.
However, the second problem of suboptimal performance of an FDE system would still persist.
This is really comprehensive. Nice.
What do you think the chances are of Wayland running in OpenBSD?
Thanks!
I don’t want to speak on behalf of OpenBSD developers, but personally I would not hold my breath for Wayland, given that a) they maintain their own port of X called xenocara, and b) desktop is not the main point or focus of OpenBSD.
Thank you, This is good to know.
Wayland has been imported into the ports tree [0]. AFAIK it isn’t usable yet, but as you can see by the commits it’s being worked on…
0: https://github.com/openbsd/ports/tree/master/wayland