Friday, May 24th, 2024

Thin Client Wyse Cx0
====================

As  I  already mentioned  in one  previous post,  for the last  couple
of months I have been  using a thin client,  Wyse Cx0,  converted into
a small, fanless PC with OpenBSD 7.5 and FVWM[1].

I've got four of these  clients for about $35,  and I already sold two
of them for $25 apiece, so it was quite a good deal, and to be honest,
it is also quite a good computer.  With a 1GHz Via Eden CPU,  2GB DDR2
RAM, and an 8GB CompactFlash Card in a 44-pin IDE adapter, it is in no
way fast,  but thanks  to OpenBSD,  it is still  a very responsive and
useful  machine.  As the poor  old CPU  is not capable  of running any 
JavaScript-enabled browser,  I use Lynx,  Links,  Dillo,  and NetSurf,
and I am not bothered by any social media,  online video,  or even any
news portals. I can,  however,  still read documentation,  write code,
emulate Sinclair QL and ZX Spectrum,  play podcasts,  and chat on IRC.
The machine  is completely silent,  and  the power supply  can provide
just 35 W of peak power.  So I don't bother to turn  the Wyse off when
I'm not using it; it doesn't disturb me even during the night,  and it
won't ruin my electric bill.

Though it's probably even slower than the SoC in my smartwatch, I find
it  weirdly  attractive  to  use.  In spite  of  the fact  that I have
an 8-core/32-thread  POWER9   machine  on  the   very  same  desk  and 
an 8-core/16-thread AMD Ryzen  notebook near it,  I didn't turn on any
of them in at least a month.  I do almost everything  on the Wyse Cx0,
including writing this post. Strange. But in a positive way...

[1] gopher://i-logout.cz/I/phlog/posts/2024-05-24_wyse_cx0_openbsd_fvwm.png
.