Aug 21, 2020

Linux is easy. It takes no skill to use and install. The kernel developers do an awesome job to make sure GNU/Linux runs on everything. They make sure you don't have to worry, because toasters should be easy... BSD on the other hand... there's a reason it's unofficial mascot is a demon. Unified project, binary blobs, a fairly abusive license (depending on the company's heart), and from UC of Berkley no doubt. Yup, makes sense it's been represented by a demon drawn by (an eventual) Disney Dude.

In all fairness, BSD does some things better than Linux. The command line tools are second to none; they are fantastic. The differing distros are fewer and smaller, mainly due to popularity (or a lack thereof). There are 4 mainline distros: - FreeBSD: The soydev's sloppy Linux wannabe that won't allow flippin' virtual *hugs* - NetBSD: It ran on toasters before it was cool, plus that RUMP on it... - OpenBSD: There is nothing more secure, perfect and beautiful until you look at performance - DragonflyBSD: Something to do with Hammers???

Each BSD distro has it's ups and downs, but these top 4 reign supreme (assuming there's a userbase to reign over...). NetBSD is the most appealing to me because it's not a sloppy mess of spaghetti code (FreeBSD) but still messy enough to have performance. Plus it actually has packages, unlike some others (OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD). Try booting a NetBSD image on an HPx2, you will see green then black. That's the price of greed (and a lack of framebuffer support)! Try booting OpenBSD on an HPx2, you will see panic. That brings a new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death"! FreeBSD?! When there are no free *hugs* why even bother!

Somehow DragonflyBSD had no problem booting. It installed. It ran. It hated me. I git the idea for writing this post from DragonflyBSD on my HPx2 via WiFi. The Dragonfly tells me something in Ye Olde English and spits fire: Intel WiFi drivers do not seem to be included in the default release kernel because apropos and whatnot don't show it. If I need to install packages, I'm out of luck. I have to compile the kernel with some special flags and drivers mixed in. Oh, then I need to load those drivers and make a network interface. The first few parts are straightforward, the next part is a bit more obscure. The final step is completely hidden to noobs and script-kiddies.

Mixing everything together, I recompiled a more streamlined and de-bloated Dragonfly kernel that included the Intel drivers. Before doing this, I made sure the driver was supported before wasting time. Haiku told me it was, so I went ahead. But without internet, how can you git the kernel sources? USB (C/A) dongles or the bloody flash drive you installed the sucker with! Copy the tar.bz over into the proper directory /usr/src/. Go to the sys/config/ and copy over one of the kernel config files to make your own. Include the necessary lines and there ya go.

Build time took under 1hr15min and that's with a bloated kernel. Cutting out cruft and pointless drivers reduced it to about 50mins. This is on the HP x2 itself, no fancy PC here. The kernel was a native build because I'm not using CLANG to build it, well not yet... Maybe later I can clang a new kernel together with the whole shebang. Less than 2mins of installation and I reboot into my shiny new kernel.

This is where things got confusing. The kernel modules were loaded. The device still didn't show up. That's because I didn't rc.d it so all I needed to do was tell ifconfig to create a new wlan interface for the iwm0 device: ifconfig wlan0 create iwm0. Then I can manage it there via wpa_supplicant and dhclient for manual control. Automation is easy and I'm really lazy, so I just do me some rc.d entries for good measure.

Now I need not the USB dongles for the WiFi! The Dragonfly is not as pretty as the Butterfly, but is just as graceful and doesn't eat poop. Plus dragonflies will *hug* you.