Biting a Bullet

I’m currently downloading a snapshot of OpenBSD 4.4 for use on my laptop. I’m uncertain the bwi driver will work for my card, but I’m tired enough of broken support for it in Linux (splitting the bcm43xx driver into three separate drivers has led to too many issues for me that I’ve reverted to earlier kernel versions and even using ndiswrapper) that I’ll either get another card or install FreeBSD (or NetBSD or maybe MidnightBSD) with ndis since that should work with this particular card. Who knows. Maybe the card will work fine in OpenBSD even though it remains unlisted among known-working cards.

I’ve yet to enable Linux binary support on my desktop so I’m using elinks primarily and the i18n patched dillo secondarily.

I don’t regret switching my desktop back to BSD. I have much better sound support (@*#$ alsa!), the configuration is better thought out (or less retarded depending on your perspective and how much benefit of the doubt you give others), and starting with a clean slate is a lot easier on system resources than whittling down a load of stuff that’s seemingly thrown in just to fill out a 700MB CD. My only hesitation with the laptop is the question about Broadcom drivers and finally having my most recent Linux install exactly the way I want it — much leaner and lighter than the developer of a “light and fast” distro made it.