A new section for the webzine, we let our readers talk about their OpenBSD experience and usage!
-
who question: question
-
who answer: answer.
+
Solène Rapenne: Hi Xavier, could you introduce yourself for our readers?
+
Xavier Cartron: Hello!
+
+ My name is Xavier Cartron, but online I usually refer as "prx". My ID
+ card says I'm 33 years old, but still a too-enthusiast kid in my head.
+ I live in France near Nantes where I teach Physics and Chemistry. So, not exactly
+ close to computing, but I always enjoyed playing with such devices. It
+ all began when my family bought a computer when I was about 3 years
+ old, probably because my mother wished to become a developer when she
+ was young. I discovered DOS, Prince of Persia and drawing ugly faces
+ with Windows 3.1 Paint. I spent too many times on video games and
+ experimenting cool stuff in hidden files.
+
+
+
Solène Rapenne: when did you first try OpenBSD? What were your feelings about it?
+
Xavier Cartron: Long story short, one gave me a Linux Live CD when I was a student,
+ probably in 2008.
+ Then began too many dual boots, installs and distro discovery. I enjoyed
+ trying as many distros as possible, but finally stuck with debian for
+ years.
+ When trying distro, I tried FreeBSD and OpenBSD, however my network
+ hardware wasn't supported at this time, or I probably didn't read FAQ
+ properly. Youth... But I enjoyed the clean and efficient feeling.
+
+ In the meantime, I enjoyed self-hosting my website, mails and stuff in
+ my student apartment.
+ A couple of years later, my hard drive crashed. Bored by debian's
+ weight, I tried to switch my
+ server on something different. I heard about OpenBSD's stability.
+ In an afternoon, I had reconfigured my server : OpenBSD is actually
+ simpler.
+ Then I experienced efforts around security and I felt enchanted.
+
+
+
Solène Rapenne: Why are you using OpenBSD? What for?
+
Xavier Cartron: I currently use OpenBSD for... well, everything.
+
+ It's running on my laptop I bring at work to display lessons : ffplay
+ plays in a window stacked on a side by dwm whats is shown on the wall,
+ so I can talk and interact with my students while writing on the board
+ and still see theirs faces.
+ It's on living room computer to play movies. When I plug a usb stick,
+ all files are automatically played by mpv thanks to hotplugd.
+ It's on my wife's computer.
+ It's on my server to host my website, mails, backup, gemini, xmpp, and
+ actually this webzine :)
+
+ When I find time, I play on my other computer nethack, wesnoth,
+ xonotic...
+ I also enjoy learning and writing C, and OpenBSD is perfect with all
+ manpages and included libraries. I learned a lot, thanks to style(9) !
+
+ OpenBSD is well documented, tunable with simplicity. I have a system
+ configured to fit exactly my needs. Bonus : I have met amazing people
+ in OpenBSD's community, some of them are now friends. That's some of
+ the reasons I enjoy using OpenBSD.
+
+
+
Solène Rapenne: Would you like to share something to the OpenBSD or webzine team?
+
Xavier Cartron: Actually yes, I'd like to tell about a project I write for years now.
+
+ Since I enjoyed self-hosting on my spare time, without learning this at
+ school, I challenged myself to help others doing so.
+ I wrote a manual in French first, and recently finished translating it
+ in English. I always need reviews to improve it. It is hosted at
+ https://si3t.ch/ah/.
+
+ I probably spoke too much, that's because of the enthusiast-kid inside.
+ Thank you for reading.
+
+
+
Solène Rapenne: Thank you very much Xavier for answering to my questions. It's always cool to meet people not working in IT who are using open source operating systems!