jcs
jcs.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Joshua Stein writes about OpenBSD on laptops, hardware hacking, retro projects, and software he builds.
What HN saysHN commenters recommend it for tested OpenBSD laptop setups, such as a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and for his advice on running public APIs.
122HN people shared it
60linked it in comments
107stories submitted
4.0Kstory points
3 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Hellbanned from Hacker News13 people · 191 points · first shared 2012 · 40 comments on HN
- 2OpenBSD on the Framework Laptop8 people · 64 points · first shared 2021 · 6 comments on HN
- 3Advice for Operating a Public-Facing API (2023)8 people · 8 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 4System6c8 people · first shared 2021
- 5My Fanless OpenBSD Desktop6 people · 506 points · first shared 2021 · 153 comments on HN
- 6Cidco MailStation as a Z80 Development Platform6 people · 160 points · first shared 2019 · 9 comments on HN
- 7OpenBSD in Stereo with Linux VFIO5 people · 20 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 8Adding a USB port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano (the hard way)4 people · 203 points · first shared 2024 · 74 comments on HN
- 9Adding Wi-Fi to the Macintosh Portable (2023)4 people · 9 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 10Claude has to take that code from somewhere4 people · 8 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 11Hellbanned from Hacker News (2012)4 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 12OpenBSD on Laptops4 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 13Fetching node status from AirPort APs4 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 14Trying to game swoopo com4 people · first shared 2009
- 15Projects4 people · first shared 2012
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jamal-kumar · 2022-03-20
The best tested so far happens to be the huawei matebook X and certain lenovo laptops
This guy does a lot of testing https://jcs.org/
I'd be really interested to hear if any arm64 or other RISC architecture laptops are useable! M1 is a step in that direction, it would be really surprising to me if it worked well beyond basic support yet however. Asahi linux took like over a year to get to that point but it sounds from reading that link that they're pretty gung ho on getting it working for 7.1 which is amazing to hear. It sounds like other hardware support in those laptops is the big thing.
Fun miscellaneous stuff: SMP on intel architecture is disabled on openbsd for security reasons, so looking at alternatives to make things go fast with guarantees for that is big right now.
0xdeadb00f · 2019-09-29
I don't know about "best". But here's some I always check in on:
Jessie Frazelle: https://blog.jessfraz.com/
Joshua Stein: https://jcs.org/
Jim Fisher: https://jameshfisher.com/
(I just noticed they all have first names starting with 'J', weird coincidence, right?).
tiffanyh · 2025-08-25
Here’s also some good recommendations: https://jcs.org/2023/07/12/api
rollcat · 2025-06-10
There will be interest in running a stable and sensible version of macOS on Intel Macs as long as there any Intel Macs left around.
People still use PPC Macs to do work: <https://lowendmac.com/2025/skeuomorphic-icons-a-photoshop-project/>…
People still write new software for System 6: <https://jcs.org/system6c>, <https://amendhub.com/jcs>.
Those are all hobby projects for 20-30yro machines, few of which are left around. There are millions of Intel Macs in excellent shape. Someone will carry the mantle.
adolph · 2025-02-19
Carbon, gen6, chosen after reading Joshua Stein [0]. As I understand it, OpenBSD and NVIDIA aren't a lovely pairing.
0. https://jcs.org/2019/08/14/x1c7
chrsw · 2024-10-09
I was thinking of doing something similar. But I was thinking of starting on a virtual machine or shell account before trying to install on real hardware. I don't know much about OpenBSD but my guess is that finding a laptop that runs OpenBSD flawlessly is not easy. So odds are you're going to be spending a lot of time troubleshooting and debugging. If that's ok with you, then that's great.
ThinkPads might be your best bet. Someone here has cataloged their experience with OpenBSD on laptops: https://jcs.org/openbsd-laptops
vkoskiv · 2023-05-04
jcs has a very nice series of Classic Mac programming videos, he writes programs in Think C 5 on System 6, on real hardware: https://jcs.org/system6c
He even made a version control system for the Mac called Amend, and a website to share Amend repositories, called AmendHub!
I'm also working on my Mac Plus under System 6, but I haven't finished any projects that I could share.
aliqot · 2022-10-28
Asahi is pretty cool, any chance you've tried it on m2? I checked out the feature matrix. As I understand the CPU is doing the work currently and the GPU is unsupported, which leads to quite a bit of battery consumption. Very excited to try it nonetheless.
The m2 is a great piece of kit, I never realized how disruptive heat, vibration, and fan noise was until they were gone. I'm actively trying to put together a fanless desktop similar to the openbsd fanless desktop that is posted here from time to time. https://jcs.org/2021/07/19/desktop
shadytrees · 2022-10-07
I hope the author has found their way to joshua stein's blog: https://jcs.org/
rvense · 2021-03-29
I think there's a simpler, better solution than Gemini, that is Markdown over HTTP.
Accept: text/markdown,text/plain;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.1
I would love to see support for this in blogging engines.
(Inspired by https://jcs.org/2021/01/06/plaintext)
jlgaddis · 2020-12-13
Yep. It supports several "integrations" [0], but I typically just send notifications (to my mobile devices) from shell and Python scripts running on my machines -- they even have examples on their front page.
It supports acknowledgements (for "emergency" messages, at least) but I'm not sure about arbitrary "responses" (although you can include clickable links in the notifications).
Pushover's awesome -- and made by @jcs [1] who, among other things, works on OpenBSD.
--
[0]: https://pushover.net/apps
[1]: https://jcs.org/
oil25 · 2019-10-17
Either xfce or dwm. Here's a great guide to OpenBSD on a 5th generation X1 carbon: https://jcs.org/2017/09/01/thinkpad_x1c
brynet · 2016-09-10
I don't know.. OpenBSD is working pretty great on Chrombooks for instance, including the touchscreen. It wouldn't be too impractical to run on these tablet-like computers.
https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2016/08/26/openbsd_chromebook/
https://jcs.org/talks/2016/09/07/chibug_openbsd_on_the_chromebook_pixe…
there · 2012-01-30
http://m5hosting.com and http://singlehop.com are two that i'd recommend.
one thing to watch out for with dedicated hosting providers is that the networks are sometimes not so great. you may get a great deal on hardware and tons of bandwidth, but if it drops packets all the time, it's not worth it.
make sure they segment you off onto a vlan (see http://jcs.org/mitm for why), make sure they are well peered, make sure they actually have staff at or near the datacenter they're running things from, and make sure they have the ability to block certain traffic from reaching you if you need them to (see http://jcs.org/sip for why) so it doesn't count towards your bandwidth total.
ripening · 2024-10-09
If your hardware supports OpenBSD go for it. Basically what you're looking for minimal host fingerprint with VM or dockerized application to work. OpenBSD is relatively small fingerprint and builtin binaries under 100.
Ref: https://jcs.org/openbsd-laptops
metadat · 2024-07-01
It looks like the X13 is 1/2 lb heavier, as per
https://jcs.org/2021/01/27/x1nano
and
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx/thinkpad-x13…
memcg · 2024-06-30
Also on HN today:
Adding a USB Port to the ThinkPad X1 Nano, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40833960 , https://jcs.org/2024/05/29/x1usb#
Which lead me to see what else the author has written:
https://jcs.org/projects -> https://github.com/jcs/payphone
Payphone Project 'These are some notes from my project to install a working payphone in my home and configure it to make and receive calls through an Asterisk PBX.
mrweasel · 2024-02-01
Apple also used NetBSD in (some?) of their AirPort devices: https://jcs.org/2018/06/12/airport_ssh
NetBSD is fun, but I don't really see the point of it. It just seems to live in the shadows, continuing to do it's thing, producing code and funky innovations, then disappear for years, but never pointing any developers in the spotlight. Debian of the BSD world.
idlephysicist · 2023-12-29
This fella has a number of interesting videos of development on System 6 using THINK C!
https://jcs.org/2022/03/05/serial
rasz · 2023-08-30
'C Programming on System 6' (in 2020-22) https://jcs.org/system6c
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/getting-started-with-applicati…
Period correct programming books https://vintageapple.org/macprogramming/
anthk · 2023-07-30
Check jcs's site. He writes unix/openbsd related code but it has a section on System6
programming.
https://jcs.org/system6c
Also, telnet to klud [DOT] ge to test his BBS hosted in a System 6 machine.
esafak · 2023-07-23
vladharbuz · 2023-04-29
In case anyone is interested in other Linux-friendly laptops: after reading Joshua Stein's review I got a MateBook X and have been really enjoying it for the past year.
https://jcs.org/2021/08/20/matebook
justusthane · 2022-11-25
There’s a very interesting write up about building this, with a lot more information, here: https://jcs.org/2022/07/15/kludge
codetrotter · 2022-11-24
I would like to amend my previous comment by the way.
It seems that amendhub is in fact not hosting git repositories.
It seems that "Amend" is a revision control system distinct from git.
https://jcs.org/amend
And that amendhub hosts Amend repositories.
lloydatkinson · 2022-10-28
Wow, the author has some interesting history with HN! Banned because of problematic moderation, and then went onto create lobsters.rs. I had no idea it was created out of frustration. https://jcs.org/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news
alberth · 2022-10-28
Unfortunately the author won't be able to comment on HN since he got banned 10 years ago.
As a result, he created another site some might know https://lobste.rs
https://jcs.org/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news
krallja · 2022-07-03
If you don’t want to deal with breadboards, there are lots of cheap (under $50) programmable Z80 computers out there; here are a few I’ve collected:
* Timex-Sinclair 1000 (American ZX81 with double the RAM — an entire 2KiB!)
* TI 81-86 graphing calculators
* Verifone Tranz 330 https://www.bigmessowires.com/mozart-tranz-330/
* Cidco MailStation https://jcs.org/2019/05/03/mailstation
Also, for a bit more money, there are lots of new hobbyist computers out there, including the RC2014, Stephen C. Cousins’ “SC___” series, and the MinZ / eZ-Tiny series. You can solder them together and program however you like, oftentimes including booting CP/M off of ROM, MicroSD, Compact Flash, or floppy.
MMS21 · 2021-12-31
> there seems to be no censorship on Hacker News
https://jcs.org/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker_news
cube00 · 2021-12-20
Here's a picture of his setup https://jcs.org/system6c
He talks in the intro video also linked there that he's trying to get a better set up to directly connect into the screen but for now has to deal with looking through the screen on his phone recording the Mac.