openbsd, desktop, n00b users, any easy DE?

guil

Hi guys,

Just wondered about how could we get closer as possible with openbsd to get for the general use?
the idea, would be to get it for those reasons :
*among (or the one) of the most secured OS in the world
*kiss
*purety of code

just think after you as a geek or nerd using it for mails, web or others, to see movies.. software is there, including web browser etc.. but what is the best as a desktop environnment for n00b users whom wants to see something different and interesting after windows and linux..

Imagine, ten years ago all nerds/geeks wanted to say "you can just replace winxp/win7 with ubuntu, works well!"
openbsd is the new weapon, but which is the best DE or needed software to use it as a desktop/laptop for students, teachers, entrepreneurs, directors, kids... to enhance yes, openbsd could have the same success than linux these twenty last years, as a very appreciable alternative of common OSes :
watch videos, browser the internet, communicate through email or videoconf, use usb keys, print some text, with an enough lightweb interface (means not 1GB of space disk) whom can be running on a ten/fifteen years old desktop or laptop, even to go on the internet..

what would yu recommend?

oui

This is not OpenBSD's goal. The general desktop user wouldn't benefit from using a system that's not designed for them to use, nor would OpenBSD benefit from someone who isn't willing to try to understand their system.

guil what would yu recommend?

There are other BSD projects like GhostBSD, MidnightBSD and NomadBSD which puts effort into making a more user friendly and simple BSD experience for the general desktop user.

JuvenalUrbino

oui MidnightBSD

A common misconception due to the fact MidnightBSD was started as desktop-oriented fork of FreeBSD at a time when FreeBSD desktop meant compiling XFree86 and configure it from scratch. Factually, it failed in drawing much attention and stayed an extremely niche one-man project ever since. A praiseworthy, nearly miraculous effort from Lucas Holt (who in the meantime kept maintaining and refining it, backporting useful features no sooner would they appear on the FreeBSD land).
But it's a very obscure independent OS and this has its self-evident downsides. I would never recommend it but to those advanced BSD users who want to experiment something different with its own unique philosophy. Just like MirBSD before its final demise.
Fun fact: MidnightBSD was my first BSD (Yes, I was looking for a Unix desktop and had been attracted by their slogan), and I even ran it for a couple of months before switching to FreeBSD. Good times, and nice OS (for the brave).

oui This is not OpenBSD's goal.

There have been some desktop oriented OpenBSD distros though over the years (GNOBSD, AnonymOS, IsoTop, FuguIta), I don't think it's beyond or at least not against OpenBSd principles (I suppose, as long as you don't touch the base system, alter defaults, then call it 'OpenBSD' and redirect your users to misc* for support).

guil what would yu recommend?

OpenBSD has very good XFCE support. If I remember correctly an OpenBSD developer is also directly involved in the project and ensures compatibility with applets and what else. GNOME has been historically working very well on OBSD, but it might be too heavy.
I'll recommend against wasting time with the base fvwm: it's quite an ancient fork at this point and the configuration wouldn't been 100% compatible with latest fvwm2/3, which means not very portable on other systems. Just stick to the fvwm found in packages where that to turn out your desktop choice.

nortonham

guil what would yu recommend?

XFCE has good support. It's pretty simple to use. MATE is another one. I would suggest one of those two

By default OpenBSD has FVWM and CWM installed. Personally I would avoid FVWM. CWM is completely different to what you are probably used to, but it's meant to get out of your way.

chrisfromgreece

guil If you mean for desktop use right now there is only fuguita and i don't think is something to get excited about.
Its the same as OpenBSD , the cool would be a live OpenBSD project that you could also install to your computer .

I like OpenBSD and i will try to make my own OpenBSD based project i will start experimenting with the live kernel for making my own OpenBSD based project.
I had made some experiments in the past but the filesystem is pretty slow on usb flash media so i think it would be good to try loading root to Ram then chroot and use the Ram as the root for the live system or something like that.
I like OpenBSD and FreeBSD too my FreeBSD project was CultBSD (search youtube for CultBSD)
I will learn more about OpenBSD and i will make my own attempt.
I just opened a Youtube Channel "The OpenBSD Boomer "
I will have videos about OpenBSD, and other BSD operating systems and i will do some stuff about retro computers , retro games etc

remiliascarlet

oui Actually, I use OpenBSD as a desktop OS as my daily driver, and I find it a lot nicer to use as a desktop than FreeBSD or its desktop forks, simply because OpenBSD is a lot more consistent, has better hardware support in general (especially WiFi), lid close to sleep works out of the box, and so on.

Not really what I can say about NetBSD or FreeBSD, because on the former I have to manually configure that, whereas on the latter it doesn' t work at all.
Like in, I configure sleep on lid close, FreeBSD does go to sleep, but then it never wakes up ever again.
As for WiFi, I only ever used NetBSD on 1 ThinkPad, and it works after some struggling, but FreeBSD very often doesn't work, especially with non-Intel cards.

By the way, I use CWM as my window manager.
Not really as straight forward at first, because all you will see at first start is a black screen with a cursor, but once you get the hang of it, it's probably the best window manager next to DWM I've ever used.
I quit DWM because I patched it so much just to try to make it work the same across OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux, I ended up destroying it.

nortonham

To add to my earlier comment, here's a few resources that helped me the first time I used OpenBSD. The official documentation (https://www.openbsd.org/faq/index.html) is what you should use, because it is the most up to date, but these have helped me in the past.

https://sohcahtoa.org.uk/openbsd.html

https://www.romanzolotarev.com/openbsd/

https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/openbsd-on-a-laptop/

nandi78

Ex windows users easy made the transition with LXDE or if want something lighter there is openbox when tweaked is friendly enough just put tint2 pcmanfm plank feh in autostart and shutdown desktop icon moved as a shortcut to tint2. Most used apps dragged to the plank dock its looking nice too.

uxer

nandi78 Ex windows users easy made the transition with LXDE

May be true. Though LXDE is not available on OpenBSD. Only some parts of it: lxterminal, lxappearance, lxrandr, pcmanfm, leafpad, gpicview - can be installed with pkg_add

LXQt is pkg_add'able, but its look&feel is different from LXDE

jmcunx

I would first try fvwm, it can be made to look like anything.

OpenBSD uses version 2 of fvwm, so with that you will get OpenBSD specific security patches. Just do a google search of "fvwm2rc" and you will thousands of looks.

uxer

jmcunx OpenBSD uses version 2 of fvwm, so with that you will get OpenBSD specific security patches.

I read fvwm2 is in openbsd for legacy reasons and unless one knows and loves fvwm version 2, one is better off pkg_add fvwm3

Out of wm in openbsd base, cwm is considered the recommended one (although it's buggy in my experience)

Out of all 3 wm in openbsd base, none is newbie-friendly, where "newbie" is a typical M$ Windows, macOS or Android refugee

xmris

remiliascarlet FreeBSD does go to sleep, but then it never wakes up ever again.

power suspend on FreeBSD is, IMHO, the most weak point of it... really pain in the ass

oui

remiliascarlet I totally agree that OpenBSD is a fantastic OS for desktop and arguably the best amongst the big 3 BSDs in terms of ease of use and plug & play.

However, I think OP's point wasn't arguing about the current and potential desktop user experience of OpenBSD, but rather how we could go about reaching a wider audience and perhaps targeting general desktop users (non-tech people).

2 years later and I still stand by my opinion that I don't think OpenBSD or any other BSD for that matter would benefit from trying to target the general desktop user.

The general desktop user wouldn't benefit from using a system that's not designed for them to use, nor would OpenBSD benefit from someone who isn't willing to try to understand their system.

Looking at Linux is a good example of why targeting users and businesses who's values and interests does not align with the project is bound to compromise and in my opinion even harm the project.

I don't mean to gate-keep, reaching a new and wider user base for any BSD would be fantastic as long as the users have an actual interest and perhaps shares some core values with the project.

jmcunx

cwm is considered the recommended one (although it's buggy in my experience)

Interesting, wondering what you found. FWIW, on OpenBSD and NetBSD, I have not seen any issues with cwm(1).

uxer

jmcunx issues with cwm(1)

cwm can't window-vtile after window-htile and vice versa
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=164071451918800&w=2

(manpage bug)
cwm: custom bind-key for command term don't work
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=165344434616211&w=2

cwm window-cycle-ingroup misses windows
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=170551549422235&w=2
streamable.com link there is dead. Please suggest a good free hosting for short videos that last. Uploaded via this forum to imgur:

cwm conky high CPU usage
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=170551574022403&w=2

uxer

jmcunx issues with cwm(1)

Not a bug, but a feature so annoyingly missing, that I consider it a bug:
borderwidth is one for all:

windows
maximized window
menus

For me, maximized windows should have borderwidth 0. Not only functionally pointless and eating screen space, border prevents from using top menus and right-hand-side scrollbars with mouse cursor sliding along screen edge - aiming on 1 axis, not 2 axes. Negative productivity boost.

I did even wrote a script to try and alleviate problem - bind a hotkey and use xdotool to control maximization and borderwidth. But cwm can't reload - it needs to restart, and while restarting windows flicker, and when there are many windows, restart is long. Poor UX.

cat /opt/libexec/cwm_borderwidth_toggle
#! /bin/sh

# cwm lacks "no border for maximized window" feature
# this script lets you bind a key to quickly toggle the border
#
# example usage in ~/.cwmrc:
# bind-key 4-b "cwm_borderwidth_toggle current_borderwidth 3"
#
# the script works by replacing all occurrences of "borderwidth #" in ~/.cwmrc
# which is also a bug
#
# e.g. we have in ~/.cwmrc:
#   borderwidth 3
#   bind-key 4-b "cwm_borderwidth_toggle current_borderwidth 3"
#
# having pressed super+b:
#   borderwidth 0
#   bind-key 4-b "cwm_borderwidth_toggle current_borderwidth 0"
#
# having pressed super+b again:
#   borderwidth 3
#   bind-key 4-b "cwm_borderwidth_toggle current_borderwidth 3"
#
# one could also use xdotool to combine maximization and border toggling to a single keypress
#   borderwidth 3
#   bind-key 4-m  window-maximize
#   bind-key 4-b "cwm_borderwidth_toggle current_borderwidth 3"
#   bind-key 4-n "xdotool key super+m key super+b"
#
#############################################################

set -o errexit

CURRENT_BORDERWIDTH_DUMMY="${1:?1st argument should be "current_borderwidth"}"; unset CURRENT_BORDERWIDTH_DUMMY
CURRENT_BORDERWIDTH_VALUE="${2:?2nd argument should contain border width value}"

DEFAULT_BORDERWIDTH_VALUE=3

case ${CURRENT_BORDERWIDTH_VALUE}
	in 0) SED_COMMAND="s/(^[ \t]*|current_)borderwidth 0(\"?)$/\1borderwidth ${DEFAULT_BORDERWIDTH_VALUE}\2/"
	;; *) SED_COMMAND="s/(^[ \t]*|current_)borderwidth ${CURRENT_BORDERWIDTH_VALUE}(\"?)$/\1borderwidth 0\2/"
	;; esac

# edit ~/.cwmrc inplace
sed -i.previous -E "${SED_COMMAND}" ~/.cwmrc

# the way to reload config is to restart cwm
kill -SIGHUP "$(pgrep -x cwm)"

uxer

jmcunx issues with cwm(1)

Another consider-it-a-bug:

cwm is not shell-controllable.

eg:
bspwm has bspc
herbstluftwm has herbstclient
icewm has icesh

cwm has nothing

One can say: use xdotool or wmctrl to augment cwm,
but hey, if a window manager can't cope with window-managing without external utilities, then is it a good window manager?
Also, this way one could go further:
https://github.com/patrickhaller/no-wm

rvp

uxer

I can imagine how the OpenBSD devs. would react to these sorts of feature reqs. (turning one WM into another):

"Fork off!"

😃

xmris

For me, maximized windows should have borderwidth 0.

def for you, I beg to differ, it's 'fullscreen' windows that have border with 0, anyway 'ok' on cwm 'windows border' is no that useful, eg for resize operations, but on other WM's , you may resize a maximized window from its borders.

BaronBS

xmris this and poor wifi support.

remiliascarlet

oui I agree, I prefer all the BSD's to remain small and targeted to specific use cases, and not a general purpose OS trying to be for everyone, which always means telling all the people who were there from the beginning to fuck off.

Linux going from a hobby project for people who want a better alternative to Windows or Mac to being so desperate in luring Windows users to Linux that it itself becomes more like Windows, and even allows Microsoft to influence the kernel by a lot, that among many reasons is what made me finally push myself to the BSD side.
There are more reasons, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

bsduck

remiliascarlet targeted to specific use cases, and not a general purpose OS trying to be for everyone

These are two different things. Maybe not OpenBSD, but FreeBSD and NetBSD very much are general purpose OS, which you can use in many different contexts. Which doesn't mean they're trying to be for everyone.

On the opposite, MacOS is not a general purpose OS, it is designed to work on specific machines only, but it is trying to be for everyone.