alt.hn

5/6/2026 at 7:21:18 PM

OpenBSD Stories: The closest thing to cute kittens (OpenBSD/zaurus)

 http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/zaurus1.html

by zdw

5/7/2026 at 4:52:48 PM

As usual, when you make the effort to see them for what they are really like, people never live up to their reputations :)

  <deraadt> wow, mickey is fixing cats.  cut, pull, twist, tie, insert, sew, right?
  <deraadt> meow meeeeooooow MRREOEAAWOOOWOWWWWWWWOWOOWOW
  <deraadt> :-)

by mmooss

5/7/2026 at 6:48:38 PM

I highly doubt that anyone would expect that a chat transcript from a fairly insular group to be made public in this way decades later...

by zdw

5/7/2026 at 10:46:58 PM

That's why it's a good anecdotal example that, despite their reputations in some quarters, OpenBSD devs are real human beings who even have fun!

EDIT: clarify in context of my GP post.

by mmooss

5/7/2026 at 8:20:01 PM

Are you saying that Theo isn't the asshole he's commonly made out to be?

by thesuitonym

5/7/2026 at 4:51:25 PM

Interesting ... the author has a whole webpage of these stories about OpenBSD history:

http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/index.html

by mmooss

5/7/2026 at 5:51:51 PM

He has (had?) a completely bananas amount of gear, take a look around his webpage for pics of the 'machine room'.

I can only assume that electricity bills are included in his rent in France or most of them were powered off most of the time!

In the off chance he's reading -- thank you Miod (and OpenBSD team), your software and OpenBSD makes my life better to this day.

by cyberpunk

5/11/2026 at 7:03:07 AM

Yep. For a user on many other ports, it was particularly interesting to see stories of the sgi and m88k ports etc. I hope there will be more.

by a96

5/11/2026 at 7:04:30 AM

> But in the early 2000s, smartphones did not exist, Handheld PC would not fit in your pockets unless you were André the Giant, and PDAs were not necessarily usable for that role, either lacking good displays, or good keyboards, or good expansion facilities allowing a GPRS modem to be used, or simply decent battery life.

Forgot about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Communicator line?

by a96

5/7/2026 at 5:42:04 PM

> Don't be startled by this odd-looking name, it will make sense when you reach the end of the story.

> This is the story of OpenBSD on the Sharp Zaurus systems. Because of its length, I have decided to split it in two parts.

> OpenBSD/cats: the enabler

> OpenBSD/zaurus (to be published 20260513)

...I will be visiting again in 5 days. Then, I will be searching eBay for a Zaurus...

http://miod.online.fr/software/openbsd/stories/zaurus.html

by uticus

5/8/2026 at 1:53:59 PM

I have a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 I’ve wanted to get running a modern kernel for a while. Ah, I always regretted not getting on the CL’s with this kind of support!

by malicka

5/8/2026 at 6:12:56 AM

When I was a poor student, Zaurus was probably my biggest tech gadget dream. Unfortunately it was rare and expensive and I never had the opportunity to play with it.

by lormayna

5/8/2026 at 1:31:36 PM

It was a hype in the Linux community at the time. Around that time I moved from study to job and had a bit of cash to spare. Couldn't resist a good deal for a second hand SL-5500, but I think it was ahead of its time and the potential not fully realized. It was also not really open source. You could compile your own distro, but nothing ever produced by the Zaurus community would ever offer as much functionality as the proprietary Linux desktop from Sharp on the 5500 at least.

by bzzzt