OpenBSD 4.3 Install
I just installed OpenBSD 4.3 recently. I’ve played with it before and even purchased the 3.6 CD set. However, I never had much success running it as my hardware wasn’t supported and usually just went back to Linux. I really am trying to get back into the security mindset and figured I might as well throw OpenBSD on my HP dv6345us laptop.
The Install was a breeze! At least it was until I realized that GDM wasn’t included in the AMD64 packages. So I had to reinstall the i386 version. I got Gnome up and running trivially and the native 1280×800 resolution was detected. The weird thing here is that there is no xorg.conf file in /etc/X11. Being used to Ubuntu and other various Linux distros, this seemed strange. Each time I tried to add one and tweak by hand I would end up with a 1024×768 resolution. So for now I’m sticking with the default config.
At this point and then it was on to configure the wireless. My laptop has an integrated “Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG” card. Surprisingly enough an open source driver is installed out of the box for this. Terrific! What is lacking however is the firmware. But that is easily added with the package created by Damien Berganini. It can be installed easily enough with the command:
pkg_add http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/iwifw/OpenBSD/iwi-firmware-2.3.tgz
Information on how to configure wireless with ifconfig was also readily available with a quick search of the web.
I then installed firefox, emacs, and a whole host of other thirdparty packages.
The only things that disappointingly don’t work are my function keys (f7 and f8 for brightness, etc…) and my softkeys. I will eventually have these working as they work out of the box on Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, and 8.04.
I also can’t use an external monitor, once again do to the lack of use of the function keys.
I now have to decide if I’m willing to install Linux binary compatibility and the Adobe flash plugin so I can watch tv on sites like hulu.com. I still haven’t decided If I want to go down that road, although hopefully gnash will catch up soon, since Adobe just opened up their specs.
I’ll be back with more updates soon.