Quick update: OpenBSD 4.6 and Ubuntu 9.10

I downloaded the GNOME DVD image of jggimi's OpenBSD 4.6 live CD, and ran it on the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101. It has the same Xorg version as OpenBSD 4.5, which famously crashed/burned when I tried an in-place upgrade from 4.4.

But it ran with nary a hitch. No xorg.conf. On the laptop's LCD screen, X was perfect. On the external CRT monitor, I had a little mouse-pointer garbage, which I'm used to seeing in BSD distros, but nothing deal-breaking, especially because I don't intend to use the CRT forever (and only until I swap in a different LCD screen).

It was nice to be in OpenBSD again, and especially nice to have everything configured for me, even if this is only a live DVD and can't be installed this way. I'd love to see an OpenBSD "distro" that shipped with a full GUI desktop. Even a shell script that installed and configured everything would be nice.

If (and I'm not saying no) I could live without Flash and possibly without Java working for LogMeIn (as Java did for me in OpenBSD 4.4), I could definitely go back to OpenBSD. I think a dual-boot with Linux would do it; I would have a backup OS for those things OpenBSD couldn't do. Of course I'd have to figure out my OpenBSD upgrade strategy (i.e. what to do every six months; I'm told reinstalls are the way to go.

However, now the screensaver in Ubuntu 9.10 seems to be working better. I've been testing it tonight, and all is working fine. Unlike my last post, in which I had all sorts of minor GNOME voodoo going on, now I have the screensaver set in the usual way. And as I also say in that post, a new GNOME screensaver moved to my machine today, and even though its Ubuntu changelog doesn't list my issue among those responsible for its update, perhaps my problems will be in some way solved.

I've got work to do with this laptop (or whatever laptop I'm using), and I'm keeping double backups just in case things go really awry. The LCD screen itself is in the same bad shape as last week (big blotch, vertical lines, whited-out lower-right section).

I'd have to look at the partitions on my disc, but I could probably make room for OpenBSD on this laptop, should I get the urge to dual-boot it with Ubuntu.