Very cool! I love seeing folks push simple and elegant solutions like openBSD and the Gemini protocol.
I started playing around with openBSD more primarily out of lockdown-induced boredom. At first I got pretty frustrated that I couldn't get all of the linux goodies I was used to. But the more I use openBSD, the more I love it. And it has made me a better programmer as well. Whether at home or on the job, more and more I find myself reading the docs first before simply googling a problem and pasting in someone else's code.
This is nice. I recently experimented with OpenBSD on a Librebooted X200. Took some time to figure out how to boot it with Grub. And then it turned out that the particular Wifi chipset wasn't supported. But this gives me some motivation to get a USB Wifi dongle and continue. Any suggestions for one that works?
Good luck. If you find a reliable way to find them then please shout that far and wide.
I tried about 10 different wifi usb dongles and all but one were completely unsupported or unusably unreliable (as in 5-10% packet loss, and sometimes needing unplug/replug) on OpenBSD.
All the guidance I found was "just get one with this chipset". But it's not that simple. It's usually not listed on product pages, so you have to guess.
And even the ones that do have the right chip can be very unreliable. Granted, most that I tried were super cheap. But those super cheap ones worked fine on Linux.
In the end I found one that worked properly with OpenBSD. Old and unbranded, so it wouldn't even help you.
I don't think there's a single 802.11ac USB dongle with free drivers. On Linux there are separately downloadable kernel modules, but I've found that to be a nightmare not necessarily to get working, but to keep working across kernel upgrades.
So my suggestion is to look at supported chips, try to guess which products have that chip, and buy a few. Hopefully one works.
dkms helps with keeping a module working across Linux kernel upgrades (I use RTL8812AU, but RTL8814AU is problematic [1] being broken. I also use dkms + ZFS on Proxmox and Ubuntu), but other than that don't upgrade Linux kernel, unless you have to. I guess OpenBSD doesn't include the binary blobs, but back in the days (about 10-15 years ago) I used to have a stable WLAN on OpenBSD, on a Soekris. This was 802.11n (later rebranded WiFi 4), I don't now about 802.11ac / WiFi 5. Worked perfectly fine. IIRC it was either Atheros or IWL.
The Asus USB-N10 NANO adaptors work. They are easy to find and pretty cheap. Due to a licens chance from RealTek I also believe fireware will be included in OpenBSD 7.1, so you don't have download it in advance or start up on a wired connection.
> Avoid making yourself look stupid! For those readers commenting on third-party sites that you don't like our color scheme and transparency effects, use the THEME SELECTOR to choose one of TEN options that suits you. It's been there for SIX YEARS! Also - please comment directly to US via the contact page, as we don't habitually monitor third party discussion forums, thanks!
The problem is:
1) Knowing that theme selector even exists without their angry little paragraph pointing it out.
2) All of the other themes are equally awful.
The thing is that the website is kind of close to be a decent minimalistic web (it displays quite ok on my phone), but the font choices and the transparencies make the reading experience a bit miserable for me.
"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
They responded by saying you make yourself look stupid by complaining about their 10 themes. That and the fact it takes months to write a little wiki sums up the use of that site.
I started playing around with openBSD more primarily out of lockdown-induced boredom. At first I got pretty frustrated that I couldn't get all of the linux goodies I was used to. But the more I use openBSD, the more I love it. And it has made me a better programmer as well. Whether at home or on the job, more and more I find myself reading the docs first before simply googling a problem and pasting in someone else's code.