Discussion
It's stunning how well #OpenBSD is running -- with full #GNOME -- on this 9-year-old HP laptop.
Thanks to Bradley for this tutorial: It's all pretty easy and straightforward, and he's just making things easier -- it's all in the package read-me (/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/gnome)
But you don't have that until you do the install, so it's nice to see it laid out at https://btxx.org/posts/openbsd-gnome/ before you start.
@Kierkegaanks WiFi and track pad both work. Tap to click is toggleable, and it's not so sensitive that it's messing up when I type.
As always, I needed to get the firmware for iwm0 before WiFi would work. I did the install with Ethernet connected and had WiFi after the first reboot.
There is no Bluetooth in OpenBSD. They don't support it
So many people ask, "What should I run, and does it work on x, y, z?"
The answer is almost always, "There aren't enough of us with the same exact hardware and use cases to tell you."
If you're not in a position to do a bunch of installs of all the OSes you're considering, be they #BSD or #Linux, it's pretty hard to figure out what's going to work.
I probably did 15 #NetBSD, #FreeBSD and #OpenBSD installs in the past couple of weeks to get here.
I have doas set up for root-level privileges, and I just set apmd for power management:
$ doas rcctl enable apmd
$ doas rcctl set apmd flags -A
$ doas rcctl start apmd
@passthejoe no problem with wifi, bluetooth or trackpad?