rbc

I've run OpenBSD continuously at home without backup power for something like eight years. They probably loose power about once or twice a quarter. I have yet to detect lost data that was important. Measures are taken. If a storm is coming through, I'll shutdown till it passes.

I've been lucky with release driver support. The little Lenovo ThinkCentre's being used seem to chug along without crashing on driver issues, at least with OpenBSD releases.

The standard OpenBSD partitioning scheme is also being used. Boot time fsck has never failed when the storage was properly attached and in a good state. Backups are performed using pax. So far, so good.

With all the buzz about the return of the Commodore 64, the days of 8-bit computing and the BASIC programming language are probably getting more attention than usual.

Managing to get caught up in retro computing, I've recently bought the TI-99/4A that I always wanted as a kid. It was a 16-bit competitor that initially competed with the Apple II and TRS-80. Though the TI-99/4A failed in the market, Texas Instruments followed it with the similar but smaller Compact Computer 40, and finally the TI-74 BASICALC.

I'm highlighting the TI-74, because TI made a fair number of them, and the keyboard is a bit bigger than other pocket computers of the era. The TI-74 case is very sturdy.

To use the TI-99/4A, I had to buy a media adapter to plug it into my HDMI monitor. Though fun, it doesn't get used very much unless I'm playing old game cartridges.

My TI-74's get much more use, though basically as a calculator. If you have a thing for 8-bit computing, the TI-74 is satisfyingly sturdy, has a fairly complete BASIC, and is a bit easier to type on than its pocket computer peers with its larger keys. The display is limited, so its not a gaming platform however.

GNU Emacs is probably the easiest way to capture the spirit of working on the Lisp machines. Interlisp is an ongoing project that takes you even further down that road.

I'm using KDE Akregator. It's nice to have a consistant interface for checking the headlines, and only opening web pages to give them a closer look.

This is one of those articles that demonstrates why email should be distributed. Letting Google and Microsoft run email for the planet is just asking for problems. There are some technical demands to running email services, but they are still in reach of the technically inclined individual or organization. If for no other reason, it would help keep the big mail service providers honest.

At work, my employer is still running Microsoft products for the desktop environment. At home, assuming I'm using Microsoft products at all (rare), it's from inside the Chromium web browser on Linux or BSD.

An attempt to write English based on Anglo-Saxon runes (Futhorc) devised by Nothelm Hurlebatte.

I think it depends on your needs. Working corporate environments with 1000+ hosts, LTS operating systems are big help. On the other hand, for smaller cases, call it a work group or smaller, I think OpenBSD provides a base system that doesn't typically make drastic changes, along with a ports collection that does a pretty good job of keeping up with the third party applications. It's a good balance. I've recently seen some "Immutable" Linux distributions that are basically spins of upstream distributions. They leave the inherited distribution mostly alone and load the extras using Flatpak or the like. Sounds similar to BSD ports in a way.

The Trinity Desktop Environment is still carrying the KDE 3.5 torch. The Q4OS Linux distribution (Debian based) provides it as a primary desktop.

Another way to think about it is that the terminal has become software, like many other things. Web browsers have become a terminal of sorts too.