i used to use it a lot

it doesnt' have much going for it, in the scheme of modern unix-like operating systems.. it's a bit of an underdog. it doesn't have fancy high-performance schedulers, its io layer is slow.. it's missing drivers for lots of commodity hardware, some of them because of principles.. theo is an asshole sometimes, with his constant 'im always right and you're always an idiot' thing.. but..

for one, the documentation is beautiful. whoever maintains the documentation should get a medal. there are few typos, everything has a man page, and every man page has EXAMPLES and is easy to understand. better than any other operating system out there. and that's a big plus: if you try any linux distribution and find an unfamilar file in /etc, you have a 50/50 shot of it being documented properly. with openbsd, it's garunteed

because their entire mission is based on thorough auditing, they make sure their code is very well documented and easy to understand. that's a big bonus too. modifying and developing on openbsd, as a platform, is a very nice experience

openssh is a very beautifully written piece of software. it's nice to use, and it's nice to read the source code. when is the last time it gave you any problems? openbsd is an entire operating system written with the same standards.

give it a try if you haven't, it wont hurt you.. virtual machines don't cost anything..

that my cheap ass samsung phone can't seem to locate a gps sat. to save its fucking life.. it has NO idea where i am.

The worst part is, the bloat wasn't actually "preinstalled" on the laptop I got.

The first time the piece of shit booted, I got to wait while it was installed for me, with no option to cancel/exit.

THEN I had to uninstall each program.

It was as logical as a factory full of retards producing something in the slowest way possible, then immediately packaging it up just to be sent to the landfill next door via a bicycle courier with two flat tires.

Total time invested: about two hours.

Small light rail travel is awesome in urban centres. Look at the skytrain system in Vancouver.

And if you want people to use a larger rail system for long cross-state trips, it's not hard.

Make it outrageously cheap in terms of distance:dollars (to the point of almost being a loss) so you would have to be a retard to want to fly or drive to anywhere that has two rail stations on it, even if the trip does take longer.

Pack the bastard with whole cars full of alcohol, food, coin op video games, internet access, bathrooms, tables, comfortable seating, and shit.. all hotel grade kit.. and make your profits off the fact that people get bored and hungry during long trips, and will gladly pay anything to solve those problems when they're completely trapped.

Then simply advertise it with catchy ad campaigns targeted towards lower to middle class people. Pay google to suggest trains, with pricing, when you use google maps. Whatever you have to do.

The equipment my employer provides is "good enough" that I can't justify them paying for an upgrade (it does the job), but sometimes "too slow" for me to use comfortably.. I've been more than happy to provide my own computer from home during my employment.

I like my own monitor and keyboard better than theirs too. It would be unfair of me to request a better keyboard just because theirs doesn't click loudly enough.

I've been more than happy to assume the responsibility of maintainance and upgrade costs myself, if they ever arise, I just use hand-me-down shit from my own computers at home whenever possible, and I tend to write them off my taxes at street value as a subcontractor when possible.

I'd be wary of "You may provide your own computer" turning into "You MUST provide your own computer"... Pretty soon it might be "Please provide your own laser printer and toner". I've run into that before, at the very least, it's made the company very whiny about having to pay for repairing my printer, "I thought he supplied all his own gear?" Just make sure you draw the line in a reasonable place.

In the auto industry, mechanics generally provide most of their own tools, and the company provides a tax-deductable tool allowance, but consumables like greases, rags, and batteries for cordless drills are provided by the company. A mechanic may provide his own air ratchets, but the shop completely is responsible for the infrastructure to connect those tools (air fittings, compressors, etc). That would be a good baseline.

i find it hilarious that slashdot documents all these major breaches of the firewall, and subsequent "ha ha china has a stupid oppressive government, praise capitalism" type comments, but is not blocked by the firewall itself.

ports are just a way to build packages for 3rd party (i.e. not in the base system) software.

unlike a lot of operating systems, openbsd includes apache, bind, and other common network servers in the base install.

there's no automated upgrade procedure that works well for the openbsd base system at all; but there's a manual procedure, which is well documented, for upgrading between major versions

as someone has tried to upgrade many major linux distributions in various environments, i can tell you that manually is the ONLY way to do a proper system upgrade on a critical system; and many complex package management systems can hinder such an effort

openbsd people seem to shy away from binary packages for the most part, and most people that upgrade end up using a full source tree of the system to do so. in fact, openbsd is a bit unique in that they don't have an official binary patch mechanism. security patches to the base system are also generally intended to be done on a virgin openbsd source tree.

it's a weird way of doing things, for the average administrator, but it's a niche operating system, so if you don't like doing things the slow (but reliable) way, openbsd is not for you.

i have gone to great lengths to isolate my drives from the chassis of my systems to improve noise level (using rubber isolation mounts, shock cords, whatever)

the fact that the drive itself would not have as much mass holding it stationary never really entered into my decision making process... i just checked, and they do produce a substantial amount of vibration during seeks

perhaps i should have done some benchmarks