Patrick Marchand runs BSD

I was introduced to programming later than most. It was only during my second semester at university, where I studied economics, that I started modifying one of my favourite video games, Crusader Kings 2. From there I was introduced to git and from git to the wider open source programming world.

I had so much fun that I abandoned economics and went back to Cegep to study Informatique de Gestion. While I probably should of stayed in university and tried to get into computer science, my program did feature a Windows system administration class that drove me towards installing Ubuntu on my computer when I got home.

I used various Linux distros, but always felt there was something missing. It was far from stable and I didn’t like where the ecosystem was going. It seemed it would get harder and harder to understand my systems as things went on. So I tried FreeBSD on a desktop and was pleasantly surprised, but still a little underwhelmed. I then tried OpenBSD on a server and fell in love, it was easy to use, easy to understand and seemed to be rock solid. Though I couldn’t plunge into BSD just yet, because of my Optimus® enabled laptop.

Flash forward a year and a half later, I was still happy with my server and unhappy with my laptop. So I bought a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and set it up with OpenBSD 6.1. And after reading through Michael W. Lucas Absolute OpenBSD, I swiched to -current, which has proven to still be more stable than Linux.

I’m now the happy owner of an OpenBSD VM, an OpenBSD laptop, an old Arch Linux laptop and a DragonFly BSD desktop, so I can play with hammer2.

You can find me on my blog or on Mastodon.

14 Aug 2018

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