Running OpenBSD on my ThinkPad X201
===================================
As requested by Solene's call on the Fediverse, here follows a
small text about OpenBSD on my laptop.
ThinkPad X201
-------------
The Lenovo ThinkPad X201 is a very fine laptop.
It comes with a Intel Core i5 M 520 CPU.
This ThinkPad has a nice small form factor, the 1280x800
display is 12,1 inch.
The keyboard is outstanding, it is a joy to type on this
laptop. Also I love the TrackPoint, that little red nub in
the center of your keyboard.
If you haven't used a TrackPoint before, it is something you
have to get used to, but soon you will appreciate it. Most
X201 not only offer a TrackPoint but also a TrackPad.
I upgraded the RAM memory from 4Gb to 8Gb, to better run
virtual machines on it.
My ThinkPad X201 came with a 128 Gb SSD.
OpenBSD
-------
OpenBSD is a light weight open source operating systems.
Installing software packages on OpenBSD is easy, and there are
plenty of packages to choose from.
Upgrading the operating system and the installed software
packages is also easy to do.
OpenBSD comes with the vmm hypervisor and vmd daemon. Virtual
machines can be orchestrated with the vmctl control utility,
OpenBSD on the desktop and laptop
---------------------------------
OpenBSD is great for servers, but it is also perfectly fine to
run OpenBSD on your desktop or your laptop.
The standard installation of OpenBSD already offers a lot,
like the X graphical environment, tmux, support for WiFi, and
so on.
There are packages for the most used window managers and many
desktop applications.
Tiling window managers
----------------------
I am a big fan of tiling window managers and have run both the
dwm as well as the ratpoison window manager on OpenBSD on this
laptop. Currently I am running ratpoison on it.
Emacs
-----
I compile Emacs from source and refresh that almost weekly,
with the configuration option "--with-x-toolkit=lucid". I use
this option for quite some time now, and never have had any
problems with running Emacs on ratpoison or dwm, so I keep it
this way :)
On the X201 it takes some time for the compilation to
complete.
MuPDF
------
When you run OpenBSD on your desktop, take a look at MuPDF.
MuPDF is a document viewer that can show PDF, XPS, EPUB,
XHTML, CBZ, and various image formats such as PNG, JPEG, GIF,
and TIFF.
Web browser
-----------
There are several web browsers packaged for OpenBSD, like
Firefox, Chromium, and browsers like lynx, links, links2, and
qutebrowser.
I run Firefox, lynx and links2.
Other desktop applications
--------------------------
Of course there are many other desktop applications packaged
for OpenBSD.
I try to keep the number of installed packages limited, and
have installed things like LibreOffice, ImageMagick, texlive,
and much more.
I enjoy using the ThinkPad X201, with OpenBSD, as my daily
driver.
