2020-11-01: Trying To Stay Internally Consistent xkp
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Today I ended up ordering spare parts for my X230. I bought the laptop a while
ago off eBay, Corebooted and with an X220 keyboard. I prefer the X220 to the
X230 keyboard but prefer the i5 in the X230. Originally I wanted to use it to
play with other OSes but as I have loads of laptops already left over from an
old business it was really hard to justify.
About 6 weeks ago I realised there was no upgrade path for my existing 2014
Macbook Pro. I've used it for about 6 years, I could probably get another 7 but
it's on Mojave and I have no plans to ever change that. If you're in the Apple
ecosystem I'm sure upgrades are great, but having ditched idevices some time
ago all I see is more and more features being added that I'll never use at the
cost of stability, flexibility and user experience.
The 64-bit cut-off is a prime example. While I understand the need to move on,
what's the point in shutting out 32-bit x86 apps only to move to Arm within a
few years and repeat the cycle?
That's when I decided to make my own upgrade path. My job has changed so much
in the past few years that my needs no longer match what they were. I stopped
being a site-to-site hopping pentester years back. I don't need the kind of
laptop one needs. Instead most of my work is research or longer term stuff stuff
that needs specialised systems for specialised things.
Thankfully for decades I've made sure my stack is as OS agnostic as possible.
Moving to OpenBSD full time is for the most part less painful than expected. It
isn't completely pain free. Over the years a bunch of electron apps have crept
into my workflow, as have some Mac exclusives (Mail.app most notably).
On the plus side a lot of what I love in OpenBSD was right there. Within hours
I was back up on an i3 desktop with all my old keybindings. Using veiled chrome
and vimium c I'm able to browse without the nipple (I disabled touchpad in
coreboot). But I underestimated how much crap I brought with me. Hence the
purchases.
I've bought an mSATA SSD because I don't want to throw away my existing one. I
think I'll reinstall OpenBSD on the mSATA and move the whole thing across,
freeing the smaller partition for different OSes, maybe Plan9 or Haiku if I can
get them to boot.
I've got two 8Gb RAM sticks as I currently have 6Gb which is fine for most
things but I'm going to need a hefty Linux VM to run proper Java for tools like
Burp Suite pro, and some of the tools I need for bullying electron apps.
I've also decided to replace the TN screen with an IPS model. I really didn't
want to do this but the TN screen is doing my eyes in coming from an MBP.
I'm trying to avoid buying new tech and trying to avoid creating new tech
waste but here I am buying new tech and not having a use for the old. I feel
like a total hypocrite. If anyone has a use for 6Gb of DDR3 204-pin RAM or
a 12.5" TN screen, hit me up on
[email protected]. If you have a use
for them I'd be more than happy to post them to you.
