I brought out the OpenBSD 4.7-stable laptop and ran the latest patch

Now that I know how to patch my OpenBSD-release installation and keep it updated as OpenBSD-stable, I pulled out the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 now running 4.7-stable, applied the latest patch, then rebuilt the kernel and rebooted.

As I wrote in the earlier entry, once you have the sources and know how to apply patches and rebuild the kernel and system, keeping a patched OpenBSD box is pretty easy.

The reason I brought out the OpenBSD laptop, which has been dormant for about a month, was that I am experimenting with ssh, more specifically X over ssh, and needed a host to run sshd in order to test X over ssh on client machines.

I managed to get sshd running (I declined to do this during the original OpenBSD 4.7 installation), allow X over ssh and connect and run X sessions from both my Fedora 13 laptop and Windows XP box (the latter running PuTTY and Xming).

So X over SSH is working on the OpenBSD box.

On an unrelated note, I'm still running GNOME as the desktop environment in OpenBSD 4.7, and one thing that strikes me about GNOME in OpenBSD, FreeBSD — and Debian for that matter — is that vanilla GNOME is a very fast, usable and stable environment. I went with the Xfce spin in Fedora 13 for a number of reasons, one of them being that I like Xfce (and Thunar, Xfce Terminal and Mousepad). But I'm also partial to GNOME, and running it on my various BSD and Linux installations has kept me in the GNOME game, as it were.

Back to X over ssh. The whole reason for this exercise is that my ultimate geek goal (I think small, trust me) is to run an X session from my 1995-era Apple Macintosh Powerbook 1400 and use actual, modern Linux/Unix applications on it. That way I'd be running real Unix/Linux on the Powerbook without the seemingly impossible task of trying to install a Linux/Unix system on hardware that's just about completely off the radar of any FOSS operating environment.

My thought is that if I could make this happen, my geek destiny will be fulfilled, and I could retire, so to speak (I'm throwing cliches around like ninja stars in an English-dubbed martial arts flick).

I've been able to run MacSSH for a console session in the Powerbook 1400's System 7.6.1 environment, but for some reason I couldn't get it to connect to the OpenBSD box this time, although I'm sure I've been able to do so in the past. (Note: I did figure this out. Turning off zlib compression enabled MacSSH and OpenBSD's sshd to work together.)

My two shots at an X server are MI/X and XTen. I've got both on the Powerbook. MI/X loads, but since I couldn't actually connect to the host I can't test it. XTen pretty much locks up the Powerbook as it loads, and therefore I'm less than optimistic about it working.

I never found the elusive MacX software that Apple used to ship with its Unix for Motorola 68xxx hardware. I think it runs on PowerPC, but since I've never been able to track down a CD of it, that's another solution off the table.

If I can only did get MacSSH to talk to OpenBSD's sshd, then I can start trying to figure out and I even figured out MI/X and ran a few X apps from both my OpenBSD and Fedora 13 laptops. Unfortunately most X apps are too heavy for the Powerbook to take. Geany was excruciating, Nedit less so, except that I was unable to save a new file with a new file name. Old files I could edit and save no problem, but I couldn't get MI/X to allow me to type into the file-name box.

Right now I'm thinking of all the super-light X apps I can run with success from the Powerbook 1400. I just installed SciTE, and I'll put Claws Mail on the laptop tomorrow. What light GUI apps do you think I should run (and what are the most elaborate console apps that I could run in the MacSSH terminal window)?

Again — running Unix/Linux apps in a GUI on a 1995 Powerbook 1400 ... is there anything cooler from a geek standpoint? (There probably is - feel free to unleash your inner geek in the comments below.)