Morgan

#OpenBSD nerd, open source hardware and software fan, retrocomputing enthusiast, Haiku OS evangelist, tinkerer, filthy casual gamer, goofball. One day I'll start writing again. He/him. Proudly anti-fascist. Trans rights are human rights. No hate, only love!
Profile pic by @Jgbird
Header image by Carlos Lopez Castillon (https://pixabay.com/users/magocarlosyo-19404921/)

Last Notes

2026-05-25 12:22:41 UTC

Never, ever buy a new car. I know, you've heard that all your life and it's good financial sense. But these days it's not just about the money.
All new cars from the major brands come with an always-on connection back to the manufacturer. Even if you never connect your phone to the car's infotainment system, even if you decline to accept the terms on the car's screen, even if you never turn on the sound system, it is constantly sending data back to the mothership. Your identity is tied to the car's VIN (vehicle identification number) and everything you do with the car is recorded and transmitted, where it can then be analyzed, processed, and sold. It gets sold to insurance companies, the government, and data farmers who then sell it on to other entities like Google and Apple to improve their mapping services. You didn't agree to this? Too bad, it's not your choice.
This should be illegal, but it isn't. Why would the various governments want to outlaw a practice they benefit from?
The only way to avoid this data harvesting is to buy a used car. "But what about the extra maintenance?" Do your homework, have the car inspected by a trusted mechanic before purchase, and look for one-owner cars with low miles. Put the money you save on the monthly payment towards regular maintenance to keep it running well.
And yes, I know that the day will come when there are no more used cars without this built in tracking garbage. I absolutely love the *idea* of electric cars (except Tesla, fuck that shit) and I hope one day we reach the point where the majority of vehicles on the road are electric. Unfortunately, those are the most connected of all, basically a computer on wheels and the manufacturer has a vested interest in tracking and analyzing your data to improve next year's model.
However, if you buy a used gas/petrol car, even one with telemetry baked in, you can at least disable the antenna because you own the car. Look up your model and "disable 4G/5G antenna". There are methods for all of the major manufacturers. Unfortunately those manufacturers are pushing hard to stop you from doing so by doing things like tying the car's ignition system to that always-on connection or trying to get laws passed to prevent modification of that part of the vehicle for "safety reasons". They know a vehicle is a necessity for most folks and will try to use that position against you.
Fight back, keep control of your own property, and buy a used car if you have to have one.

2026-05-24 14:51:57 UTC

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@nprofile…hl5m I wonder if it will be found and fixed in the next snapshot? But that will likely require a kernel developer with your CPU and close enough hardware to replicate it first.
I'd love to try and replicate this myself just so you have another voice to add to the report. I don't have a 10th gen Intel system here at home but at work I have either a 10th or 11th gen (I honestly don't remember) I can try it on when I have downtime. I'll see if I can find the time this week to attempt it.

2026-05-24 14:41:28 UTC

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@nprofile…hl5m I feel like this has to be a hardware issue, something in the -current kernel is not working with something (likely CPU but who knows?) with your particular hardware. Obviously this is difficult if not impossible to diagnose on your own, and I am pissed on your behalf that the devs are being dismissive about a bug report on the mailing lists especially as that is the project's preferred place to discuss bugs in -current.
I'm sorry, I really wish I could help.

2026-05-24 14:33:54 UTC

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@nprofile…v2v2 Indeed, my favorite thing to tell people is to call me out when I'm wrong so I can learn how to be right. The opportunity to learn never ends, we all make mistakes and learning to fix them is how we advance and grow.
The effect of learning from LLM regurgitation and hallucination instead of human wisdom and experience is already making itself known. It won't be long before we have a severe shortage of truly knowledgeable and experienced developers and engineers who can hold things together, as the older ones die off and the new wave suffers from a dearth of truly learned experience. Meanwhile, the LLMs will suffer from training solely on their own garbage output, causing a downward spiral of nonsense that doesn't work and leads to a breakdown of critical systems everywhere.

2026-05-20 14:58:29 UTC

OpenBSD continues to be a dream on the desktop, but sometimes I am reminded that it's just different enough from Linux to require some manual tweaking. Printers used to be a pain point in Linux, but in recent years it's all pretty much automatic. Not so for OpenBSD; while it's pretty simple, there are some weird gotchas. Hopefully this post helps anyone who had my particular issue setting up an HP printer.
https://www.kaidenshi.com/posts/printing-with-cups-on-openbsd/
#OpenBSD #printing

2026-05-04 22:42:01 UTC

Holy shit, Microsoft. Whoever made this decision should be fired. Into the Sun.
https://lemmy.world/post/46435614
#infosec #facepalm #clowncar

2026-05-02 15:59:00 UTC

It always happens. I said I was switching to OpenBSD thanks to the nail in the coffin that is "AI" infecting the Linux kernel and systemd, the two anchors of nearly all Linux based OSes. Even though my distro of choice on the desktop, Void Linux, doesn't use systemd, it has no choice but to use the kernel as-is.
So woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks, telling me that OpenBSD is also tainted because tmux is now vibe-coded. Well, here's the thing. The OpenBSD kernel and core subsystem will never be vibe-coded. The project has a valiant history of kicking substandard code and implementations to the curb. Bluetooth used to be part of the base installation, but it was ripped out due to poor code quality and difficulty to maintain. OpenSSL was forked into LibreSSL to address the Heartbleed vulnerability and to improve and modernize the codebase. The overly complicated and insecure sudo utility was punted in favor of the simple, secure, and superior doas utility.
I am confident that the OpenBSD project will address the issue of "AI" infected code in tmux and take action.
And to everyone who tried to make me feel bad or conflicted about my decision, try harder next time. I'm cozy and content running OpenBSD, and if that bothers you, unfollow me or block me. I'm not here to make you happy.

2026-04-25 17:38:24 UTC

OpenBSD -current on my Dell Latitude 5480 is a complete success. Everything except Bluetooth is supported (and that is expected as Bluetooth itself isn't supported on OpenBSD). Battery life so far is much, much better than with Linux and Windows. I closed the lid without shutting down last night before bed, and 10 hours later it had lost only 2% battery in that state. In Linux it would drain about halfway, and in Windows about 10%. I've had it up and running for the past three hours and I'm at 72%, giving me a projected run time of nearly 12 hours. That's better than some MacBooks running macOS! It's certainly better than what the laptop is officially rated for under Windows.
It's fast and responsive, pretty much on par with my HP mini PC with a similar 6th gen Intel CPU running OpenBSD. LibreWolf is measurably faster and more stable than Firefox, thanks to @nprofile…xh8g and her LibreWolf port.
My plan for my main workstation is to install OpenBSD to the NVMe SSD for maximum performance, and relegate Void Linux to the SATA SSD which will be good enough for the few Steam and "Windows only" games I play which work fine in Void, as well as NoMachine which I use to access my workplace when I get the inevitable night/weekend calls for support.
#OpenBSD #librewolf

2026-04-22 11:25:58 UTC

I am slowly coming to understand that the reason some applications crash often on OpenBSD is not the fault of OpenBSD, but the fault of poorly written applications that have tons of vulnerabilities. OpenBSD is designed to be a secure operating system as one of its main goals, and trying to circumvent these safety guardrails by "optimizing OpenBSD for desktop use" -- i.e. tweaking sysctl.conf to the max -- defeats the purpose of having the guardrails in the first place.
If you want an OS where applications are free to roam full of holes and exploits without crashing, use Linux I guess. It will happily continue to allow those poorly written programs to run, giving the user a false sense of stability. Meanwhile, I'm starting to prefer safety and security over "desktop performance at all costs". If a program misbehaves it should die, and OpenBSD will kill it before I even know it misbehaved.
#OpenBSD #ProactiveSecurity

2026-04-17 14:16:39 UTC

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@nprofile…p7yv @nprofile…xh8g I hope whoever told you not to daily drive OpenBSD on a laptop is not still giving out advice, because that's absolutely garbage advice.
OpenBSD is really, really good on Thinkpads, older Intel Macbooks (pre T2 era), and pretty much any standard Intel or AMD PC. Their fork of Xorg (Xenocara) is in the base installation and out of the box the only thing you have to do to get an X desktop is answer "yes" to the question in installation asking if you want one, or if you answered "no" during installation you can (as root) "rcctl enable xenodm" and reboot.
OpenBSD is really good on the desktop because its developers run it as their workstations, i.e. they "dogfood" the OS so that they are able to see what is needed for all use cases and improve the OS accordingly.
If you'd like to follow a guide to setting up an Xfce desktop on OpenBSD, I wrote one a while back: https://www.kaidenshi.com/posts/openbsd-as-a-daily-driver/
...and there are other guides out there as well.

2026-04-10 23:02:01 UTC

OpenBSD is S-L-O-W. At least, compared to other modern operating systems. But you know what? That's ok! Sometimes we need to slow down. Sometimes we can take the extra couple of minutes that a FFS2 file transfer takes and just relax and reflect on the day. We don't always have to be in such a damned hurry. I'm learning that I don't have to have the fastest, most powerful, energy-hungry computer to get shit done. I'll take security and correctness over face-melting speed.
Sure, I'm getting older and slowing down just as nature dictates, but I'm also learning to accept that as a good thing, not something to fear. It's okay to just go with the flow, and we will get there when we get there.
#OpenBSD #slowcomputing

2026-04-09 20:11:18 UTC

WTF LibreWolf?? I saw this just now, it wasn't there earlier today. Seriously, no one asked for this. I certainly didn't. This is skeevy at best. If I want a VPN I'll spin up my own, that I control and trust. This just feels like Mozilla's money-grab shit is infecting what was the only truly good web browser left.
#librewolf #enshittification
https://media.exquisite.social/exquisite/media_attachments/files/116/376/559/367/283/692/original/861e42040c7c0149.png

2026-02-26 01:49:11 UTC

Since I wiped my main workstation/gaming PC the other day in a bout of frustration with, well, everything, I’ve been having fun OS-hopping. I have a fallback workstation that I can use for work purposes and to get me by while I’m noodling around in my main rig. My initial intention was to run OpenBSD for a few weeks to see the state of things on the desktop (I have a few devices running OpenBSD but all headless) but I ran into a weird USB storage bug. Just to see if it’s a hardware thing or an OS thing, I tried FreeBSD 15 and it was even worse.
https://www.kaidenshi.com/posts/os-hopping-in-2026/
#OpenBSD #FreeBSD #elementaryos #Slackware #distrohopping

2025-12-10 13:53:05 UTC

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@nprofile…x4wz Every year is the year of the BSD Desktop for me 😂

2025-12-10 13:44:40 UTC

Well, fuck. As the apes at the end of the Spaceballs movie would say, there goes the planet. :flan_eyeroll:
https://aaif.io/press/linux-foundation-announces-the-formation-of-the-agentic-ai-foundation-aaif-anchored-by-new-project-contributions-including-model-context-protocol-mcp-goose-and-agents-md/
#FuckAI #RunBSD #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD

2025-07-08 14:00:58 UTC

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@nprofile…el4d I'm just hopeful he might actually succeed in splitting the Republican Party into roughly equal halves, guaranteeing a Democratic Party win in the next round of congressional and presidential elections.

2025-02-21 12:35:02 UTC

Linux users across the net fighting and arguing about Rust in the kernel, meanwhile me watching from my #FreeBSD workstation:
https://media.exquisite.social/exquisite/media_attachments/files/114/041/898/048/092/694/original/e44fa4e048a27d6c.gif