thoughts on OpenBSD and continual refinement as a revolution
I'm ridiculously happy with this change, just committed to OpenBSD: Xorg maps keyboard according to wscons setting.

Basically, there are two separate "displays" on a Unix system. The old console interface, which is text-only, and X Windows, which is a graphical windowing system. Both of them have separate ways of configuring keyboard input. I remap my keyboard to dvorak, which means I have to do it once for the console and once for X11.

As well, of late, the X project has been putting a lot of work into making the windowing system run without a configuration file. This is great until you need to change something. Any one change you need and all of the sudden you're running with a configuration file.

The most common thing I or anyone else has to change is the keymap. With this patch about the only other thing I could ask for is sticky key support on the console which is also promoted into X11.

I've been using OpenBSD for many years now, having migrated to it from Linux. I really love Linux, but I've watched the community around it change as it has grown in popularity and found commercial success. Using OpenBSD feels like running Debian did a decade ago--instead of trying to catch up with the huge volume of change and growth, they focus on integrating the resources they have. Maximizing how well everything works together.

OpenBSD has remained consistently the same since before I started using it. This is deeply valuable to me, even when that sameness includes things I'd rather do without (CVS comes to mind). I try to create a sense of deep time in the tools I use. I've been using the same tools, or at least the same techniques, since switching to Unix well long ago now. I want to cultivate an environment where those tools are still relevant to me and the world decades from now. I don't need e-mail to be reinvented every few years, I need that to be a solved problem and to move on.

On a personal level, that is a lot of what open source is about for me. That I can participate in a community of interest centered around a particular solution. That solution stays relevant so long as the participants consider it relevant. I don't have to reinvent my computing environment just because some shiny new tool doesn't play well with the ones I've already got.