Last spring, in the beginning of my masters’ program, I challenged myself to use OpenBSD on an ThinkPad X200 from 2008 for the duration of the semester.
OpenBSD did not have drivers for my Atheros wifi card to authenticate to my university’s PEAP wireless network, so I was basically consigned to only having internet if I could find an ethernet outlet.
(On a modern campus they are not so common.)
Even with internet access, however, the dated hardware couldn’t reliably play video (at least on OpenBSD) and it’s not like watching youtube or movies on the tiny, dim CCFL screen was that enjoyable anyway.
In December I resurrected my Spotify and Instagram accounts after deleting them in 2020.
After two and a half months of using them both (and deleting them again) here are my observations:
Instagram
Initially things were pretty great.
I was able to reconnect with some friends I hadn’t been in touch with since high school.
Instagram also has a really great format for sharing trip and event photos.
Nevertheless, 99.9% of what you see on Instagram is Tiktok-adjacent shortform content and ads.
Even though you can add accounts to “Favorites” and “Close Friends”, there is no easy way to cut out all the cruft.
Update: Migadu rocks and I still recommend it, but I’ve since moved to Proton Mail per Solène.
Running your own mail server is pretty difficult and running a mail server on OpenBSD is especially so.
Although getting everything up and running is pretty straight forward, you inevitably run into things you don’t understand: How can I block a single address? Why am I still getting spam? Is this setup actually secure? Did such and such a person actually receive the email I sent them?
In the past I used GNU Mailman as a mailing list solution, but it was difficult to configure and looked tacky.
Recently, I set up listmonk for a church.
It runs as a binary and sets up a postgres database for you.
Listmonk totally rocks and even lets you template newsletters like mailchimp and tithely.
It’s wonderfully boomer-friendly and I totally recommend it!
