OpenBSD Blog #15: OpenBSD as a desktop daily driver!

installed offline, so fw_update no go, so chicken-and-egg with iwm wireless driver

plugged in to ethernet, ifconfig re0 autoconf, fw_update

now iwm works! /etc/hostname.iwm

trackpad shit - not 100% solved (see notes.txt) but mostly works

battery

suspend upon closing lid seems to work fine!

note that .Xresources not used apparently, using .Xdefaults instead

xbacklight - where has that been all this time? i was writing values to proc stuff.

At night, as low as 10% works great and somewhere around 60% for indoors in the day:

got rid of console by editing /etc/X11/xenodm/Xsetup_0.

this is the default openbsd wm

spent some quality time with it and the website is excellent

https://www.fvwm.org/

if you wanna stick with fvwm, I found the v3 update more pleasant right out of the box with much more intuitive controls and shortcuts ready to go without customization (and a nice clock in the corner and more complete pop-up menu)

but the impression I got from my reading about this wm about it being flexible but quite baroque to configure weren’t kidding. I would have loved this ten years ago.

But now, i crave simplicity…​and something with easier tiling shortcuts.

this looks like the right choice for me…​

need to edit .xsession and put exec cwm as last line oh, and make it executable if not already, chmod +x

Re-bind to use super key instead, make a .cwmrc:

to try, can also add this to .xsession (xsetroot also works in dwm)

This page looks all kinds of helpful (and great website!)

https://antonyfb.com/blog/my-cwm-config.html

But i’m realizing, especially with this not-quite-right trackpad firmware that makes drag-and-drop harder than usual, that I don’t just want tiling shortcuts. I don’t even just want tiling at all. I want dynamic tiling - so that my windows are always tiled unless otherwise specified. I don’t want to waste another minute of my time resizing and dragging windows around because I always want the same thing - full screen or half screen or…​

okay, dwm does exactly what i want. i have just one problem with dwm - i want to be able to install all of my software from the OS package manager and have my configuration be portable. that works for shells, vim, ssh, etc. but it doesn’t work with dwm.

Okay, I got as far as installing this. But the man page scared me off. and that’s impressive, actually. I would have stuck with it, but I soon learned that bspwm is so minimal that it doesn’t even manage keyboard shortcuts!

As is often the case, the Arch wiki seems to be one of the better sources of information about this wm and even that is…​not exactly fun looking:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bspwm

I have absolutely nothing against this WM, but I’d really rather use something a little more ready-to-go than this.

I really just want a dwm that reads a config file.

did another search and this one checked all my boxes

installed it

alt-shift-enter creates a terminal. it is full screen with a 1px border like dwm. there is a bar at the top of the screen with the date and time already working!

I open another terminal and it tiles to the right. I open another and it splits the right panel and tiles to the bottom. I open another and it keeps tiling horizontally on the right side. Yes!

I move the cursor around and focus follows my cursor. Yes!

Okay, this is looking really, really good!

look, let’s be real, 90% of what i do is with a terminal on one half of my screen and a browser on the other half. For $DAYJOB it’s multi-monitor with a ton of panels, but the principle is pretty much the same.