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OpenBSD as my Desktop
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Archived
OpenBSD as my Desktop
I've decided to continue learning Unix by OpenBSD instead of Linux (came from Debian).
Installed it on my laptop, there is no wifi, no network-manager, no alsamixer, and it's considerably slower than Linux, but I'm OK with all these.
Only one thing that I can't live without is GoldenDict. I'm not a native English speaker and I need this to be able to read man pages and books and etc. I want this particular program and not any others because all of them suck except this one that sucks less.
So I would be grateful If you could guide me how to install it on OpenBSD. It's not in packages or ports. But it seems there is one in FreeBSD's port. Is there any way to import it to OpenBSD?
Thanks
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level 1
Hey, I can have a go at a port or some instructions to do it yourself. I'll post back soon.
level 1
Please try following these instructions to alleviate most if not all of your first series of issues:
https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/openbsd-on-a-laptop
Unless your adapter is not supported, then none of those are actually problems once you configure things. Wifi under openBSD is light years better than in Linux (no network-manager is a HUGE plus, and no wpa-supplicant!), especially in 6.4 with the new join program.
Hope you can get GoldenDict working!
level 2
and no wpa-supplicant!
Unfortunately it's unavoidable if you need to connect to WPA2 Enterprise networks AFAIK.
level 2
Useful link, Thanks. Mine is BCM4313 and seems it's not supported.
level 1
Hi there, I am not sure whether my experience can help you, but
speed I use triple boot Win10 + OpenBSD + Arch Linux. OpenBSD is the fastest of 3 on my 12 years old laptop, so I use it 99% of my time at laptop. Win10 is the slowest, but I keep it only because of its maps app, which allows to download maps and use them offline having no internet but only GPS unit connected to USB port. Very handy in the mountains where neither cell phone signal nor internet. I use Arch Linux for watching videos/movies on large TV screen via HDMI (OpenBSD does not support sound over HDMI).
wifi This is 50-50. If your wi-fi card is supported, just run this script https://github.com/n0xa/wiconn and you'll see all available w-fi around you. My wireless card Realtek RTL8192SE is not supported, so my only option is cable.
network manager there is not much to manage :-) Switching between wifi/cable is just 2 or 3 lines of commands:
ifconfig rw0 -inet down
(optionally) route -n flush
ifconfig re0 -inet up
where rw0 is your wifi card (from /dev), re0 - your Ethernet (cable) card (also from /dev)
GoldenDict I've had some success of compiling those Linux programs, which were ported to FreeBSD. It's usually all about memory allocation. In simple words, dowload the source code of FreeBSD port, go through all the *.h and *.c (*,cpp) files and replace
#ifdef __FreeBSD__ with #ifdef __OpenBSD__, could be #if defined (__FreeBSD__) or #if !defined (__FreeBSD__)... instead of #ifdef
I do apologize for such a stupid instructions, I just don't know your level of skills in C/C++.
If you give up with GoldenDict, consider compiling the ancient StarDict. It has similar functionality but significantly smaller amount of dependencies.
If you are patient enough, contact the developer of GoldenDict. His name is Konstantin Isakov, he is Russian, very nice and honest person. Ask him to support OpenBSD with next release. Most probably he'll do it.
level 2
as a matter of a fact, mixerctl provides the same functions as alsamixer does. The only difference is writing down numbers versus watching colourful bars and pressing arrows.
level 2
Hi Bckld, Thanks a lot for your detailed post. about Speed, do you believe that I'm waiting for last 40 minutes for pkg_add to finish extracting and installing qt4?! I don't know what is the problem with my laptop, but pkg_add takes a lot of time for adding even small packages than linux. Also although I enabled layers.acceleration.force-enabled in firefox, It's way slower than firefox in linux. I'm using DWM with nothing fancy else and I can feel the sluggishness easily compared to linux. about wifi, I think my card is not supported (Broadcom4313) but It's not a big problem. about Goldendict, I'm installing dependencies now based on the instructions on FreeBSD's ports. And unfortunately I don't know C or any other languages. isn't it better to use find ./ -type f -exec sed -i 's/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/gI' {} ; for replacing the content?
level 2
I use triple boot Win10 + OpenBSD + Arch Linux. OpenBSD is the fastest of 3 on my 12 years old laptop
Ditto - for dual booting Linux and OpenBSD.
I primarily boot OpenBSD however for its better security - as I mostly browse.
level 1
Only one thing that I can't live without is GoldenDict. I'm not a native English speaker and I need this to be able to read man pages and books and etc. I want this particular program and not any others because all of them suck except this one that sucks less.
I know you're used to GoldenDict and prefer it, but in the meantime have you considered installing WordNet? It's a command line app you can use to look up definitions, synonyms, antonyms, etc.
Here's how you'd install it: doas pkg_add -iv wordnet
Here's how you'd use it in a terminal: wn <word> -over | less
I'm an author, and I've used WordNet for years as a tool for checking definitions when I'm not sure I'm using the right word.
level 2
Thanks for the suggestion.
But suppose that you are in the middle of a man-page, you have either to get out of that page to check the word, and return. or you have to open another terminal to check for that (in this case it's not different with a GUI dictionary because in both you have to copy-paste or type the word and see the meaning). Furthermore, you have no pronunciation, you can't have many dictionaries (I had simultaneously 5 dictionaries in GoldenDict) neatly displaying.
Compare this to GoldenDict which by only selecting a word a tiny window shows in the middle of any text, whether you are in terminal or in a browser or anything else, you first hear a human voice which pronounce that word and the definition of multiple dictionaries are displaying without having to type the word. This is something I can't find in any program except the Babylon (windows).
level 1
Do you mean this?
https://github.com/goldendict/goldendict/blob/master/README.md
level 1
Did you try compiling it yourself? If the dependencies are met, it should just work. If you find an error, then you can open a ticket on github.
level 2
the problem is there are many dependencies that I couldn't find in OpenBSD packages.
level 1
man <command>
Why do you need a gtk interface for this? It'd be a considerably faster and easier typing man into the terminal than looking something up in GoldenDict.
there is no wifi,
Tell us your hardware and it might be solvable. Or buy an $8 Edimax dongle and you've got wifi.
no network-manager,
Just like man, it's really not necessary. Just a gui for an extremely simple task editing two lines of a file to change ssid and pass.
no alsamixer
mixerctl is actually very easy to use and has a great man page explaining everything clearly.
considerably slower than Linux,
Yes unfortunately that's true.
level 2
- I don't need GoldenDict for reading manuals, I use that to translate some English "word"s I don't know which found in man-pages/books/web-pages/etc.
GoldenDict has a good feature that when you select a word, It automatically shows a pop-up window with the definition of that specific word in one or multiple dictionaries with the natural pronunciation of that word. It's a necessary feature for non-native speakers IMO.
- It's not a big problem not to have GUIs for everything. I have to get used to command line as soon as possible. So yes, I can find an alternative to network-manager or other things by reading more about OpenBSD. But only if I have necessary tools first, to understand what I read. Which in my case one of them is GoldenDict.
level 2
considerably slower than Linux,
Yes unfortunately that's true.
I'd say it's fast enough given that the developers' emphasis is on doing things properly and as securely as possible. I run it on a ThinkPad T430s with 4GB of RAM and it runs fine as long as I don't have more than a dozen tabs open in Firefox. (Still gonna upgrade to 8GB this weekend.)
Cracking open /etc/fstab and editing partition entries to add softdep,noatime should give a noticeable boost, though.
level 1
level 1
I've been looking for ways to give back to the OpenBSD community and am currently learning about ports while I write my first program. I have a list of packages I see people wanting and have added goldendic. I can't promise it'll happen anytime soon as I still have no idea how to port and such, but the moment I am able to I port this if possible and if it hasn't already been done.
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staff:\
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:maxproc-cur=512:\
:maxproc-max=1024:\
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# shared memory limits (chrome needs a ton)
kern.shminfo.shmall=3145728
kern.shminfo.shmmax=2147483647
kern.shminfo.shmmni=1024
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kern.shminfo.shmseg=1024
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He only writes:
The
shmvariables are for my laptop, which has 16 GB of RAM. You should scale them accordingly for your machine.
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2
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====================== begin clip ===============================
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2
Hi,
please be a little lenient, this is the first time I'm actively using OpenBSD.
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I don't even know what kind of info you'd need to help me out.
dmesg: https://pastebin.com/SH37PTsD /etc/X11/xorg.conf: https://pastebin.com/aCgZ7gDx
Deleting /etc/X11/xorg.conf does not help, unfortunately.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
1
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1
https://cloudflare.cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/
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maybe someone needs to change that in the install?
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