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OpenBSD as desktop

INTRODUCTION
Many Linux users, I think, harbour a curiosity about the BSD family and quite a few try out one of its members, though I suspect most of them return to Linux fairly quickly. I did so myself in the past but I now use OpenBSD on all my computers. I used to think it was only of interest to people running servers, but then I chanced to read this article in DistroWatch. It suggested that OpenBSD can, in fact, be useful as a desktop, at least if you don't want anything too fancy (that's me). (DistroWatch now has a more recent review of OpenBSD.) But why did I make the change?

What I want in a desktop
Perhaps I should have said "What I don't want in a desktop". I don't want Gnome, KDE. or any other desktop environment. I don't want complicated window managers either, with lots of widgets or decorations. My window manager is spectrwm; if I wasn't using that it would probably be dwm or ratpoison. If you are looking for more fancy stuff you probably won't think of using any BSD, although I'm sure that both FreeBSD and OpenBSD can provide it on request. In computing my motto is KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

For further details of my experience of using OpenBSD as a deskto please see OpenBSD: Full details.

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John L Floyd on :

Medicine, philosophy, technology . . . You amaze me. You set a high standard for those of us moving into the later phase of our lives.

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