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Comment by ska80 | Hacker News Reader

I wish OpenBSD supported Bluetooth. Unfortunately, its absence is a deal breaker for me. I did use OpenBSD on the desktop it was great.

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* https://www.openbsdhandbook.com/multimedia/#bluetooth-audio

Removed in 2014.

The sole set of wired headphones in my house is for my OpenBSD laptop.

Interesting! Curious which Bluetooth device(s) you can’t live without.

Naming a few peripherals on my desk that see regular usage on Linux:

- Kensington Expert Trackball (I lost the 2.4ghz dongle)

- JBL wireless earbuds/Audio Technica M40xs

- Nintendo Switch controller

Ah, losing the 2.4ghz USB dongle ... Sucks. Feel you. :-(

Wireless Earbuds/Headphones are a legit use case. (Still use bluetooth with iPhone every day, sadly, still addicted to the convenience of AirPods ...)

But I've got decent wired headphones for my OpenBSD setup. bonus: never have to charge them. ;-)

Even more curious now: what do you use the Nintendo Switch controller for on your computer? Have you got it hooked up to play games on your PC? Or do you use it for robotics or other I/O?

Switch controller gets used for flight simming, just as a simple analog input that I can take to the couch (or bed). I've also got a wired pair of my wireless Audio Technica headphones, but I'm not confident that my DAC (or Bitwig for that matter) would work as well on OpenBSD as it does on Linux.

For desktop use, I don't think I'll ever end up on OpenBSD. It might power my gateway router one day, but the cost/benefit analysis falls through on hardware like a laptop or gaming PC.

Makes sense. Great use of the Switch controller for flight sim! Sounds like you’ve got your system dialed in. ;-)

For others who cannot live without Bluetooth on their main machine, consider a USB Bluetooth adapter. see: https://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-5.1/ubt.4

Firmware backdoors in wireless chipsets are a really big attack surface, and disabling wireless at least gives you the chance to monitor five eyes activity on ethernet.

That's too bad. I might need bluetooth on keyboard, mice, headphone/earbuds, etc. OpenBSD seems so nice, but right now it is limited to running as a server, and not a desktop, which could be considered a good thing, as it focuses on simplicity. However, I do wish it had more hardware support.

EDIT: Running openBSD in a VM might get me the best of both world, with hardware support on host OS (linux/win) and the benefit of running OpenBSD.

It should be done in userspace, but then again, so should everything else[0].

0. https://microkerneldude.org/category/sel4/

You can often build generic dongles for pretty much anything on the cheap if that really matters to you.

E.g. I use the Seeed Studio XIAO nRF52840 for my BLE keyboard.

They did for awhile, but removed it due to complexity and security issues.

It wasn't security really, it was just the entire stack being so complex and poorly maintained that it became insecure. If someone wants to go back and do things right, they're free to do so

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