Results tagged “FreeBSD” from CLICK

How much RAM do you need? There are a lot of factors:

• Hardware
• Operating system
• Applications
• How you use your computer

For me there are certain amounts of RAM that make a given hardware/software combination more or less usable.

I used to think that 512 MB of RAM was enough to make the average Linux system very usable. But things change, and now I'm not even happy with 768 MB running Ubuntu 8.04.

After six months of running OpenBSD 4.4 with that same amount of memory (and, to be fair, the Fvwm2 and Xfce 4 desktops) and never needing to use swap, I got a bit tired of all the swapping going on in Ubuntu. I'm also running a Debian Lenny laptop with 512 MB of RAM, and while it seems somewhat more "frugal" in terms of memory use than Ubuntu (both running GNOME), I haven't put the Debian system under heavy day-to-day testing just yet.

Mind you, Ubuntu 8.04's performance hasn't been bad at all. It's just a bit "slower" feeling than Debian, but not a deal-breaker, and I have doubts that just about any modern Linux distribution isn't "faster" on the desktop than OpenBSD. ... but I open up a terminal, run top and see lots of swap being used in Ubuntu.

Should this bother me? I could return to OpenBSD (if I solve a few critical issues, commit to the extra work getting my desktop where I want it ... and then am OK with the differences in application security between the average Linux distro and OpenBSD).

I could try another BSD (maybe FreeBSD, which seems to be quite "evolved" on the desktop).

Then there's the idea of starting with a stripped-down Linux distribution, say Debian's "standard" installation, or the seemingly elusive minimal Ubuntu instal. Maybe a lightweight Linux such as ZenWalk or Vector?

Since I'm running this laptop as my day-to-day machine, I took the easy way out.

I bought a 512 MB PC133 SODIMM stick of memory on eBay, pulled a 256 MB SODIMM and now have two 512 MB modules in the Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101. Yep, I'm back to running a full gigabyte.

So for today anyway, I'm thinking that 1 GB is enough RAM to be comfortable in Linux with some heavy Firefox, Thunderbird and less-heavy OpenOffice, Gedit, gFTP, GIMP and Pidgin use.

OpenBSD vs. Linux note: It occurs to me that each of these operating systems/kernels treat memory and swap differently, and just because Linux [or a given Linux distribution] appears to use more memory or swap, that doesn't necessarily mean that the system using MORE memory (or swap) is either slower or less efficient. The idea here is that performance is one thing and actual usage of RAM and swap may very well be another ... or not. I'll readily admit that the deep mechanics of all this is above my head. And no, that being-above-my-headness doesn't usually stop me from writing about it. If it did, I'd barely ever write anything.

What do you think? How much memory does it take to make you feel good about your desktop operating system? Let me know, either in the comments or via e-mail.

While I've experimented with FreeBSD (and offshoots DesktopBSD and PC-BSD), NetBSD and OpenBSD (the latter of which I run the most; including right now), I never really paid much attention to DragonFlyBSD.

A quick perusal of the DragonFlyBSD Web site offers a lot of information on things like its new HAMMER filesystem as well as the operating system's goal of bringing "native clustering support" into the kernel.

It's all a bit over my desktop-using head:

In the 2007-2008 time-frame a new filesystem called HAMMER was developed for DragonFly. HAMMER sees its first light of day in the July 2008 2.0 release. This filesystem has been designed to solve numerous issues and to add many new capabilities to DragonFly, such as fine-grained snapshots, instant crash recovery, and near real-time mirroring. The filesytem is also intended to serve as a basis for the clustering work that makes up the second phase of the project.

The second phase of the project is now upon us. The DragonFly project's ultimate goal is to provide native clustering support in the kernel. This involves the creation of a sophisticated cache management framework for filesystem namespaces, file spaces, and VM spaces, which allows heavily interactive programs to run across multiple machines with cache coherency fully guaranteed in all respects. This also involves being able to chop up resources, including the cpu by way of a controlled VM context, for safe assignment to unsecured third-party clusters over the internet (though the security of such clusters itself might be in doubt, the first and most important thing is for systems donating resources to not be made vulnerable through their donation).

I recently dug out the iPod I've barely used for the past few years and decided to start investigating the many free-software-focused podcasts out there. The one I'm focusing on now is Will Backman's excellent BSD Talk, which provides a great way to learn about all of the BSD-derived operating systems.

Last night I listened to an interview with DragonFlyBSD founder Matthew Dillon.

While all that talk about HAMMER remained firmly over my head, it's nice to know that those who understand the finer points of filesystems are working on ways to continually innovate and bring new features to the operating systems we use.

I decided to take another look at the DragonFlyBSD Web site, and while they don't give it up easily, even a thick-headed guy like me could install and deploy the OS on the server or desktop.

DragonFly — itself derived from FreeBSD — shares the NetBSD package system and as a result has a very extensive repository with thousands of desktop-friendly apps. Like most developers, those who work on DragonFly keep an eye on the other BSDs, and they borrow from FreeBSD and NetBSD when appropriate.

(Side note: There is surprisingly little rivalry among users — and even less than that among developers — of the various BSD systems; code is often freely shared, and this is one of the strengths of free, open-source software that leads to better functionality for everybody.)

At this point in time, DragonFlyBSD is an i386 OS. It's ISOs produce CDs that boot into a live environment. I'm a little fuzzy on the various installation methods, but it looks like the system can be installed via either a console, over a serial connection or even with a Web-based interface.

While right now I'm pretty deep into running OpenBSD, I can see giving DragonFlyBSD a tryout soon.

The beauty of free, open-source operating systems in particular, and the BSDs in general, is that the various projects have different philosophies and emphases. Aside from its emphasis on security and cryptography, what attracts me to OpenBSD is its commitment to multiple platforms (something NetBSD is even more committed to) as well as the extremely high quality of its many packages (more than 4,000 for i386) and ports.

Having 300+ GNU/Linux distributions — all using variants and versions of the Linux kernel — is a great thing.

The BSDs offer a compelling alternative. I have hardware that OpenBSD can auto-configure better than most Linux distributions. A monopoly in FOSS operating systems would be as dangerous as the monopoly Microsoft has in proprietary desktop systems (with a Microsoft-Apple duopoly being almost as dangerous and counterproductive).

Innovation, usability and security can't happen in a monopolistic vacuum. So while Linux, along with the GNU tools and the many pieces of software that go into all those hundreds of distributions, is an important counterweight to Windows and Mac OS, having a half-dozen or so BSD-based projects offering alternative FOSS environments is a great thing for everybody who depends on computers. And that's pretty much all of us.

Related:

Goals of DragonFlyBSD

The DragonFlyBSD Digest

DragonFlyBSD Guides

My advice is to avoid dual-booting, and especially triple-booting (or even more than that).

If you set up a box to dual-boot with two Linux distros, Linux and Windows, or even a BSD (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD) and Linux, and you leave it alone, you'll probably be OK.

But me, I'm testing things all the time, and lately I've been playing around with triple-booting on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop. I've done this a lot, and I generally know how to do it so I don't hose one partition or another.

But I slightly hosed something on the laptop last night.

I've been playing around with FreeBSD, trying to figure out why it sometimes manages my CPU fan extremely well but usually not at all.

I have FOUR primary partitions on the 30 GB hard drive. The first is Linux swap, the second is Ubuntu 8.04, the third Debian Lenny, and for a long time the fourth was just an empty Linux ext3 partition where I could stash files large and small.

I started throwing new OSes on it about a week or so ago. I had PC-BSD on there, FreeBSD, Debian Etch ...

And last night I did another FreeBSD install. Now remember, I had FOUR primary partitions. As far as I know, no BSDs will install on a secondary partition. And in Linux, — again, as far as I know — you can only have four primary partitions. If you want more than that, you need to make one an 'extended' partition, and then you can fill that with a much larger number of secondary partitions (I'm not sure of the total number in Linux, but it's a lot).

When I was installing FreeBSD to the fourth primary partition, I veered from my usual practice of installing it in a single FreeBSD partition and instead let the installer auto-partition the portion of the drive set aside for FreeBSD.

Long story short, I think I screwed something up.

I deleted the screwed-up FreeBSD partition and replaced it with another Linux ext3 partition, but that didn't seem to "fix" whatever problem it is I'm having.

Debian Lenny boots fine. But Ubuntu 8.04 stalls in the middle. It eventually does boot, but there's a stall of a few minutes in the boot sequence. I booted in recovery mode to see what was going on, and it does appear to be disk-related, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I already deleted the "offending" partition, but maybe I shouldn't have replaced it (or so quickly before testing the other partitions)?

It's been over six months since I hosed a whole box, so in the grand scheme of things I'm not doing too badly.

But I should really start following my own advice and stop dual-booting on what, for me at least, amount to "production machines," which I rely on to get work done.

When experimenting, I need to swap whole drives instead, like I do with my VIA C3-based converted-thin client test box, which has three drives that are easily swapped via power and IDE cables that extend well outside the thin client's small case.

I didn't hose things so badly that I either lost files or can't boot either of the two Linux distros on the box, but I really need to be more careful, especially when mixing BSDs and Linux.

When doing just that, incidentally, I've had a lot more success by installing the given BSD FIRST, then throwing Linux on the box after that.

What I think I'm going to do, when it comes to Linux anyway, is to have the first partition be swap, the second partition for the distro itself and the third partition for /home. That way I can theoretically swap in new distros and keep the same /home file (backing that up, of course).

Now I'm going to think of what to install on the Gateway Solo 1450 to single-boot it for awhile.

So I figure I'll try OpenSUSE 10.3 today. Before that I tried out the Fedora 8 live CD. Not super impressive, although I'm not saying I won't take a look at Fedora 9 when it comes out.

Anyhow, I install OpenSUSE on one of my free partitions. For some reason, I can't get the network configured. My static IP information just won't stick.

This after a weekend during which every time I booted into PC-BSD 1.5 it looked worse. First my ACPI fan management went away, then my KDE "bouncing icon" cursor thingy returned to its pre-1.5 blurriness when a new app is launched..

So I had SUSE on the box. Even though the live CD booted in 1024x768, after the install (during which you'd think the system would ASK me whether or not I wanted a static IP ... but I digress) I had only 800x600 resolution. It was easy enough to choose 1024x768, 24-bit, reboot and get the right resolution, but do they have to make networking so hard?

I should probably give Fedora 8 a run at the hard drive ... or maybe I should just wait for Ubuntu 8.04, which is only a few days away at this point.

Before I did anything, since things were already screwed up, I did a NetBSD 4.0 install to the SUSE partition. It wasn't the prettiest looking thing -- the installer, that is -- and I tried NOT to install a new Master Boot Record. But I did end up with one, and I booted straight into NetBSD. It looks exactly like FreeBSD when you start X. Twm is the window manager. And no, I still couldn't exit X from the Twm menu. I had to use ctrl-alt-backspace. So either Twm, or NetBSD and FreeBSD, do not like the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450).

I was left without the GRUB bootloader. In order to restore GRUB, I started with the Lenny business-card CD in the "rescue" mode. All I wantws to do is reinstall GRUB, and I'm being asked all kinds of questions about my drives, how I want them formatted, waiting for the base system to install ... I got out of there quick. I didn't want to screw up my current Lenny install, which I'm actually relying on heavily at the moment.

Here's how the laptop is set up. The drive is 30 GB. I have Linux swap on hda1. My "experimental" partition, which went from PC-BSD to SUSE to NetBSD in about an hour, is 10 GB on hda2. Debian Lenny is on hda3, also 10 GB. I have an extended partition (hda5) which is formatted to ext3, on which I back up files from the other installs.

To fix GRUB, I booted into Knoppix 5.1.1, opened up a terminal, did su to root and then the following (thanks to Kyle Rankin's excellent "Knoppix Hacks"; and yes, we all need a copy of this very valuable book):

My Lenny filesystem (which had a "good" /boot/grub/menu.lst) was automatically mounted by Knoppix, so I remounted it with the dev option and write permission:

# mount -o remount,dev,rw /mnt/hda3

Then I restored GRUB:

# chroot /mnt/hda3

# grub-install /dev/hda

Again, thanks to Kyle Rankin's "Knoppix Hacks" for the tip.

I'm not one to give up, although I seem to do it all the time. If I install an OS, and it doesn't work out, chances are I'll pull it off and replace it with something else. But I keep going back to what didn't quite work all the way, and so I'm back in the world of PC-BSD.

Why both desktop FreeBSD projects -- DesktopBSD and PC-BSD-- insist on pushing KDE and not offering even a spin on Xfce, or GNOME, I don't know. Whether it's habit, preference, or prejudice, I'm more comfortable in GNOME, although I like a well-appointed Fluxbox, Fvwm, or Xfce desktop, and use them fairly often. The fact that PC-BSD installs with Fluxbox means I'll have an alternative environment to play with right away.

I guess coming from a couple of years using machines less powerful than this not-so-powerful laptop (Gateway Solo 1450 with 1.3 GHz Celeron, 1 GB RAM), KDE can be very slow. I love Konqueror, K3B and Krita, but have been less in love with KOffice, and never much liked any of the K text editors (Kate, Kwrite, KEdit).

Right now, I miss the GNOME app that lets me switch easily between network settings (I have static IP at the office, dynamic IP at home).

I've been initially very happy with the way FreeBSD and PC-BSD has treated this laptop. But that happiness gives way to frustration in about 24 hours.

I start out with ACPI management of the CPU fan that eludes most Linux kernels (until I put one quick line in /etc/rc.local). And then I suffered through the bouncing KDE icons that looked like graphical mush whenever I launched an application.

This last time, I happened to install PC-BSD 1.4, and it worked well. But the next day, I rolled in the 1.5 upgrade via PBI, and it all fell apart. My cursor's bouncing launch icons turned back into unrecognizable blobs, and to top it off, ACPI fan management stopped working.

I lost ACPI fan management in just as little time with FreeBSD 7. And suffering through a day of the Twm window manager didn't help. I tried to install Fluxbox, but I couldn't figure it out, and since I couldn't even quit X without doing ctrl-alt-backspace, I quickly fled.

But today, after OpenBSD 4.3 didn't spark an immediate ACPI love affair (I'll try again when 4.3 is released, and again with the release after that -- I will NOT give up), I began looking for things to occupy my free primary partition (BSDs don't like secondary partitions). I thought about OpenSUSE, but that's too boring.

The Internet was moving quickly today in the office, so I downloaded and burned the two PC-BSD 1.5 CDs. The install went perfectly.

Since this is really a Debian Lenny machine -- that's what I use most of the time -- I opted NOT to install a bootloader with PC-BSD 1.5. I already had entries for FreeBSD 7 and OpenBSD 4.3.

One thing I did differently during this PC-BSD install was to create a separate slice for /home (I think it's /usr/home, as the system told me; all I know is I have it). That way I can presumably reinstall without wiping out whatever files I happen to produce with this installation.

And while the upgrade from 1.4 to 1.5 screwed up X (even though the xorg.conf files were identical), the straight 1.5 install has left me with a perfect X configuration.

I'd hoped that my daughter's favorite educational game would be available as easy-to-install PBIs, but alas, only TuxPaint has made the PBI cut.

I'm sure that the others -- gCompris and Childsplay -- are available as FreeBSD packages or ports, and I'll get around to installing them as soon as I can.

And I'll be hoping that PC-BSD 1.5 will boot tomorrow with full CPU fan management. One thing I've noticed in my past three FreeBSD-type installs is that the fan cycles much more quickly under FreeBSD than under Linux. This laptop still runs too damned hot, though.

Later that night: OK, so I boot into PC-BSD 1.5 a mere few hours after it was working fine. ACPI control of the CPU fan is a mere memory, as said fan is blasting away unabated. What is the deal? Either the OS controls the fan, or it doesn't. I'm doing a software update right now, and I'm going to resist the urge to wipe PC-BSD off of the drive tonight.

PC-BSD looks great, but there's something about FreeBSD; if my fan starts and stops normally the first time(s) I use it, why does that functionality suddenly fall away?

Konqueror doesn't conquer Movable Type: I've always loved the Konqueror browser. Still do. But it doesn't play nicely with Movable Type. None of the buttons work for styling text or creating links. Sure looks nice, though. And starts quicker than anything. If only GNOME had a browser that was so well-integrated into the desktop environment ... Epiphany is more autonomous. Probably not a bad thing, but who the hell knows?

Long story short, even though OpenBSD 4.3 isn't scheduled to be released until May, it is available in the mirrors under snapshots.

Since version 4.3 is supposed to have ACPI enabled by default, I figured I'd burn a CD and try it on the $0 Laptop, on which I'd love to control my noisy CPU fan. I've written recently on how FreeBSD seems to do a fine job in this regard, but only for a day before reverting to the previous noisiness.

Now, I've never actually seen any concrete tips on exactly how to control a CPU fan in OpenBSD, but just maybe ... maybe it would work automatically.

No such luck. The CPU fan blew. I'll give it a bit of time, and I might even try FreeBSD again. Am I the only person with this problem? Seems like it.

Anyway, this is my third or fourth OpenBSD install, and the process is quite quick. I figured out how to boot the OpenBSD partition with GRUB (a first for me). Here's the /boot/grub/menu.lst entry for OpenBSD, which I installed on hda2:

title                 OpenBSD on hda2
rootnoverify    (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Yep, I used the ol' chainloader.

Just for variety's sake, here's the menu.lst for FreeBSD 7:

title         FreeBSD on hda2
root        (hd0,1,a)
kernel     /boot/loader

Next time I multiboot Slackware, I'm using the chainloader, since I've never been able to figure out how to get Slackware 12 to boot from GRUB. Or ... the best way is to install Slackware with LILO, then add the GRUB package (on disc 3 ... or the Slackware FTP), which should write GRUB to the master boot record and create a /boot/grub/menu.lst in Slackware that has the proper entry. That's the theory anyway.

Summing up, I didn't really expect OpenBSD to magically control the Gateway's CPU fan, and I wasn't too disappointed. OK, so I was. I'll file it under "projects," and see how things go in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, despite all my complaining, Debian is running great on all my boxes, and I expect the new Ubuntu, due in 9 days at this point, to be a somewhat solid system, which I might multi-boot on this laptop just to see if it holds together for me.

I've been running OpenBSD 4.2 on my test box -- the VIA C3 Samuel-based thin client -- for a couple of months now. That's at least a year in dog months, and since I'm anxious to put Dru Lavigne's new "The Best of FreeBSD Basics" book to work, I wanted to do something I've never done before: Install a BSD on the $15 Laptop, the 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt.

Since I had the aforementioned month and then some experience with OpenBSD, it was naturally time to try something else.

The Compaq had successfully booted the NetBSD 2007 Live CD to a console; I didn't expect the laptop's 64 MB of RAM to run X with KDE, and I was in no way surprised when that didn't happen. But I figured that I could easily do a hard-drive install NetBSD 4.0.

That's where I began. But the NetBSD 4.0 install disc hung early in the pre-booting phase. It's funny, because as I said, a live CD from the same version did boot and run. To make sure I didn't have a bum CD, I tried it on my VIA test box. I got to the boot prompt, a point I couldn't reach on the Compaq. I even tried NetBSD 3.1. It stopped at the same point.

So I moved on to FreeBSD. Version 7.0 just went stable, so I downloaded and burned it. Everything was going fine ... except FreeBSD wasn't having much luck working with my hard drive. It took awhile just to get to the point where I could partition the drive. While the BSD partitioning process isn't as crystal clear as that of your average Linux distribution by any margin, at least it offers some defaults to start with.

I wanted to preserve a little Linux partition on the Compaq's small 3GB drive. I had everything backed up and was willing to lose the whole thing if necessary.

I chose the default partitioning scheme, but when I instructed the installer to write my partitions, the operation failed.

I'm not saying that FreeBSD won't install on this 1999 Compaq laptop -- I'm pretty sure I could make it happen with a little attention paid to reformatting the hard drive.

But I still had OpenBSD 4.2 at my disposal.

And yes it did install. And that's what I'm using now to write this entry. My experience with OpenBSD on the VIA test box didn't hurt, nor did the excellent OpenBSD FAQ.

OpenBSD has been extremely solid when it comes to installing and running on the equipment I have at my disposal, and this install was yet another testament to the quality and depth of the project.

If I've learned anything in the past year and a half, it is this: You can run many flavors of Linux and BSD, even with the X Window System, in only 64 MB of RAM. It's not ideal, and everything runs way better on my 256 MB VIA box and 1 GB Gateway laptop (the $0).

But you can have a graphical display, up-to-date applications and a credible computing experience with 9- or 10-year-old hardware.

(I think This Old PC, my Pentium II MMX-equipped, 256 MB white box is now in its 11th year of service, and it would be a great candidate for Debian, OpenBSD, Puppy or any number of other operating systems and user environments. I only wish my 1996 Macintosh Powerbook 1400 offered a sole credible choice beyond Mac OS 7.6-9.)

And if you enjoy using the command line, it really doesn't matter if your PC is older, slower and equipped with even less memory. Even 16 MB will do it. My way-old Dell 386SX-25 (that's 25 MHz) that started with 2 MB of RAM and eventually topped out at 8 or 10 MB wouldn't do so well -- no modern Linux would even boot on it -- but anything from the 486 era and all things Pentium could run ... something.

I keep meaning to broaden my OS horizons. That's why I wanted to investigate the three main BSD projects in the first place. I'm drawn to them by the development teams' control of and care for a larger portion of the system, extending beyond the kernel and into what is called userland. And in the case of OpenBSD, the emphasis on out-of-the-box security, bolstered with plenty of cryptography, is something I'm very interested in, both on the server and the desktop.

I also greatly appreciate the prodigious amount of high-quality documentation that accompanies each of the top three BSD projects. FreeBSD has a handbook that hovers around 1,000 pages in PDF form. It more than makes up for the small number of aftermarket book titles on the leading BSD flavor, although those that are out there are also of very high quality.

NetBSD and OpenBSD also have lengthy FAQs that measure a couple hundred pages in PDF, and all three projects put a lot of work into making man pages, comprehensive and up to date.

Note: Since I wrote this entry, I've figured out the not-so-mysterious mystery regarding where the "master" Fvwm configuration file lives, and that's made it easier for me to customize my X menus and have them looking the way I want (which begins with OpenBSD's default Fvwm configuration, one I prefer to the three other samples included on the base system).

I've been using OpenBSD for a few months now, and one of the problems I've had is the inability to find the master configuration file for .fvwmrc. I've read the man page for fvwm but didnt' read it closely enough. The answer was there all the time.

I've grown quite fond of the Fvwm window manager. These days I prefer it to Fluxbox, even, and I have OpenBSD to thank for introducing me to it. (Note: I didn't have the same feeling about Twm, the default window manager in FreeBSD. Even though Fvwm is based on Twm, the former is way, way better than the latter.)

I, for the life of me, couldn't find the master Fvwm configuration file. As the man page said, the .fvwmrc file in the user's home directory is the first place Fvwm looks for its configuration file. That enables every user on the system to have his or her own customized desktop. If ~/.fvwmrc is not present, then the window manager looks in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/ for a configuration file.

Here's where I didn't read closely.

I plainly see system.fvwm2rc, system.fvwm2rc-sample-1 and system.fvwm2rc-sample-2. Changes made in any of these three do not change the default Fvwm configuration. Copying any of these three into your home directory as .fvwmrc does provide a usable Fvwm configuration file, but they're all radically different than the default version, which I prefer for a number of reasons; the people rolling OpenBSD out for us are very good at what they do.

But where -- WHERE? -- is the master Fvwm configuration file? Read the man page more carefully:

During initialization, fvwm will search for a configura- tion file which describes key and button bindings, and a few other things. The format of these files will be described later. First, fvwm will search for a file named .fvwmrc in the user's home directory, then in ${sysconfdir} (typically /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm). Fail- ing that, it will look for system.fvwmrc in ${sysconfdir} for system-wide defaults. If that file is not found, fvwm will be basically useless.

And pay particular attention to this part (emphasis mine): First, fvwm will search for a file named .fvwmrc in the user's home directory, then in ${sysconfdir} (typically /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm).

I always did a standard ls command while in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm. That didn't give me the dot-files. Doing ls -a shows the dot-files, too, and I see that there is a file called .fvwmrc in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/.

Problem solved.

I made a copy of the original /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/.fvwmrc file so I'll always have it in its original state. Now I can copy it into my home directory as .fvwmrc and have only my own account's configuration set by it, or I can, as root, modify /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/.fvwmrc and have the window manager configured the same way for all users who don't have their own .fvwmrc in their home directories.

Note: Make sure you copy .fvwmrc over to your user account while logged on as that user and not as root. Otherwise you won't have write privileges in your own .fvwmrc file. I only know this because I did it that way. I used sudo (I gave myself sudo privileges awhile ago) to copy .fvwmrc as temp.fvwmrc (call it whatever you want), and then made a copy as .fvwmrc instead of monkeying around with the permissions:

$ sudo cp .fvwmrc temp.fvwmrc
$ sudo rm .fvwmrc
$ cp temp.fvwmrc .fvwmrc
$ sudo rm temp.fvwmrc

Remember, you only have to do this if you screwed up like me. If you make the backup of /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/.fvwmrc as root, then copy the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm/.fvwmrc file to your home directory as your user, all the permissions will be right as the proverbial rain.

Fun facts from the fvwm man page:. While Fvwm comes configured with nine virtual desktops, you are free to add more. But how many can you have? "Approximately 4 billion," says the man page. Also, Fvwm is extremely flexible. Just about every parameter can be adjusted by the users -- hence Fvwm can be whatever you want it to be, only limited by your knowledge of the program and the time you have. One thing that's great is the ability to configure where on the various desktops (and where exactly on each individual desktop) a given application will launch, as well as exactly how big a window the application will open in.

Flexible, powerful and efficient. That's what OpenBSD and Fvwm are all about.

I haven't begun to scratch the surface yet, but I now have a Fvwm configuration to begin with that I like (the default one) much better than the other samples provided in the system. Again, thanks to the entire OpenBSD team for rolling out such a fine OS.

An observation: Deciding to use OpenBSD as a desktop operating system isn't a slam dunk in any way. While the quality of the system is high, and the security aspects -- most designed to protect servers -- are very much attractive on the desktop, using the stable version of OpenBSD isn't at all like running Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, or even FreeBSD.

Every six months, the OpenBSD team issues a "stable" release -- now version 4.2, with 4.3 coming out in May. In the interim, you need to monitor the security mailing list or check the errata on the Web site for possible problems with the base system. As far as applications go, the binary packages are generally not updated at all between releases. And there's really no mechanism in OpenBSD to do periodic updates of precompiled binary packages. So if you're used to getting a new version of Firefox every couple weeks or so, it's not going to happen.

Some would argue that OpenBSD's difference from most other operating systems, and its emphasis on security, makes it less vulnerable to things such as Firefox breaches. I can't really say whether or not this is true. And the OpenBSD team encourages users to install the -current branch instead of -stable. -Current is updated all the time, but such updates require users to continually compile the source updates into executable binaries for your system.

It's not all that difficult, but it can be time-consuming. My short experience using ports in FreeBSD made me, at first anyway, wonder how long I could stand all that compiling, especially when it's so much quicker to download and install a precompiled package, if your architecture has the package you need. I know that many architectures in OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD have few, if any binary packages, and everything must be installed from ports.

There's a bit of a tempest brewing on the OpenBSD mailing lists right now over whether users of OpenBSD -stable (i.e. 4.2) are subjecting themselves to undue risk by running Firefox 2.0.0.6 instead of 2.0.0.13 or wherever it's at right now. Users of -current can roll in the newer version from ports. Again, since I'm running 4.2-stable, I haven't done it.

And again, I don't know exactly how necessary it is to do all of these updates in OpenBSD. I do know that I will install 4.3 when it comes out, and for awhile at least, I'll have more up-to-date packages all around. And I'll probably take the plunge eventually and install -current.

One more thing: I've been doing a few tests, and OpenBSD is a bit slower on the desktop than, say, Debian and Ubuntu. Once again, I have no idea why. But the added security and stability of OpenBSD, as well as its overall quality, gives the user something in exchange for somewhat slower performance. OpenBSD is certainly not as quick as Slackware, but OpenBSD starts out in much better "shape" as far as the default configuration goes -- for me anyway. The package management in OpenBSD makes it much easier for me to customize my system than does Slackware. In OpenBSD, there are over 4,000 packages for i386 in the repositories, and dependencies are taken care of. While I can grab packages and figure out the dependencies, or use Slackbuilds for Slackware, it's a much more time-consuming process. Of course Debian has apt, and a barebones installation can be quickly built up.

It all depends on what floats your geekish boat. And for now, it's a combination of Debian and OpenBSD, with a smattering of Ubuntu on the side. And I've still got one Wolvix Hunter 1.1.0 installation that I enjoy using. Wolvix manages to take a Slackware 11 base and add all the applications that I like to use, while taking away all the KDE stuff -- including the KDE desktop itself -- that I really prefer not to have on my system. Wolvix's Xfce/Fluxbox combo is much better equipped than plain Slackware, which also has Xfce and Fluxbox but doesn't have enough non-KDE apps to make the lighter desktop usable.

For now I'm having a lot of fun with OpenBSD. Figuring out how the ACPI works for my Gateway laptop's CPU fan would be a major step forward for me, but I fear I will never get there. That's why I'm running only Linux on the $0 Laptop. In Linux, I've got fan management down pat. In FreeBSD it's pretty flaky, and in OpenBSD, I have no idea where to begin. Since the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt) doesn't have ACPI, it's the perfect machine on which to run OpenBSD, and that's exactly what I'm doing. The same goes for my VIA C3 Samuel-based test box. I'd love to tame the laptop with OpenBSD, but I just don't think I'll ever get there.

Never mind that what I really need is an up-to-date "Absolutely OpenBSD," but since I'm in an I'll-take-what-I-can-get mood, I just secured a copy of "The Book of PF: A No-Nonsense Guide to the OpenBSD Firewall," which for all practical purposes is the most up-to-date book out there that has at least some focus on OpenBSD.

In this book by Peter N.M. Hansteen, I hope to get somewhat up to speed on PF, the packet filter that originated in OpenBSD but which now is available in the other BSDs as well -- though not in Linux.

Among other things, the book will teach you how to:

• Use PF to create a wireless access point and lock it down tight with authpf and special access restrictions
• Create rule sets for all kinds of network traffic, whether it is crossing a simple home LAN, hiding behing NAT, traversing DMZs, or spanning bridges

OK, I barely understood half of that, but I really like the whole No Starch Press vibe. I have a copy of the now-out-of-print "Absolute OpenBSD" on its way to me now, and I'm also waiting for the out-of-date-but-still-in-print "The Debian System" to get here. I guess I have a thing for oldish books.

Back to "The Book of PF." Since I'm interested in all things OpenBSD, networking among them, I'm anxious to see this 2008 book, which has plenty of advocacy in its pages for OpenBSD as an operating system.

I'd like to commend No Starch for the choices it has made thus far, and while I'm happy that they're putting out a third edition of their Ubuntu book, and am way more happy that Michael Lucas has revised his FreeBSD book, again, I'd like to see Lucas take another crack at OpenBSD.

The same thing has happened to me more than once. I install a FreeBSD-derived operating system on the $0 Laptop (the Gateway Solo 1450) and I marvel at the way it manages the noisy CPU fan right out of the box.

Then, the next day, it's all over. The fan blows. And blows. Even a complete reinstall won't get back my fan-managed bliss.

Another thing that impressed me about PC-BSD 1.4 was the fact that the bouncing icon on my KDE cursor was rendered properly. Before 1.4, it was an annoying graphical blog that didn't look anything like it was supposed to.

But when I rolled PC-BSD 1.4 onto the box, the X configuration utility fixed that problem for me. For a day I had a FreeBSD-based system with a fan that didn't blow all the time and a perfect X configuration.

The next day, I started PC-BSD 1.4 on the laptop. The fan blew, as I said, with no relief. I then downloaded the PC-BSD 1.5 upgrade, and even my lovely, perfectly rendered cursor icon reverted to a graphical blob -- the same blog I see in DesktopBSD and in older versions of PC-BSD.

No fan management (and it doesn't look easy to fix it, either), a crappy looking cursor ... I'm not happy. Another upgrade that made things worse, not better.

Storage Bits blogger Robin Harris of ZDNet thinks it's Microsoft in full retreat mode:

Today’s mid-range Vista PC is tomorrow’s ULCPC. The reasons vendors
and customers balk at Microsoft’s $50 Vista tax today won’t change.
Consumers will pay $50 on a $600 machine. But $50 on a $200 machine? No
way.

People are realizing that for much of what they do - web surfing,
email, online video - can be handled by much smaller and cheaper
systems. As Linux continue to refine the GUI and simplify its distros,
the Windows advantage continues to fade.

The Storage Bits take

First time users who learn Linux will have no reason to ever pay for
Windows. Just as I deciphered the Apple II’s CLI 30 years ago, today’s
eager, but poor, first timers will figure Linux out.

Microsoft’s Vista is a slow-motion disaster. Bloated and inflexible,
expensive and late, Vista is a continuing drag on Microsoft’s business
flexibility.

For another view from ZDNet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says it's time to pull the plug on Windows XP:

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I didn’t like XP, but that time
has passed.  Long passed.  The last few XP installs that I’ve carried
out have shown me how painful the process is compared to Vista.  First,
the install process demands that you stand around the system for an
extended period of time to answer a variety of questions.  With Vista
the process has been cut down to a few choices at the beginning of the
installations process and afterwards I can walk away and leave it to
finish on its own.  Then there’s finding all the necessary drivers.  A
system that needs me to find half a dozen or so drivers with XP
installed doesn’t need any with Vista.  That’s a hassle I’m happy not
to have any more

Also, as I increasingly move over from 32-bit to 64-bit, with
Vista I finally have a 64-bit platform that works reliably and allows
me to break the 4GB barrier without having to suffer much in the way of
downsides.  XP Pro 64-bit couldn’t deliver me that no matter how often
I tried.

...

Maybe SP3 will rejuvenate XP a bit, maybe it won’t.  Either way, I
doubt that the service pack will change the fact that XP is long in the
tooth on a number of fronts.  It’s time for me to put my XP CDs into
the drawer of doom.

And what would an analysis of a Microsoft vs. Linux issue be without Rob Enderle, as quoted by eWeek, on the continuing availability of Windows XP Home for ultra-portable machines like the Asus Eee that are currently shipping with Linux:

But to Rob Enderle, the
principal analyst for The Enderle Group, Vista just is too heavy for
many of these devices and likely would not have been sold on them.

"For Microsoft, it was a choice of letting Linux go unchallenged in
this segment or block it using XP, which provides a slightly better
user experience and has some software compatibility advantages over
most of the Linux implementations I’ve seen so far," he said. "They
wisely chose not to hand this market to Linux on a silver platter, but
Linux will improve while XP won’t, and some of the Linux stuff I’ve
seen lately is actually competitive with Apple."

And there's always Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols of Desktop Linux playing up the problems with Vista in another eWeek story:

Goodbye Vista. It has not been fun knowing you.

I predicted that Microsoft was giving up on Vista in January. It seems I was right. Microsoft's own top brass had hated Vista when it first came out, why should they expect anyone else to like it?

Vista SP1 has proven to be a painful upgrade and its performance still lags behind XP SP2 and, the still unreleased XP SP3. Worse still, from a Microsoft executive's viewpoint, Windows is actually losing desktop market share to Mac OS X and Linux. Microsoft never loses desktop market share. But with Vista Microsoft is finally losing customers.

So where do I stand on all of this? My opinion of Windows XP was a whole lot higher a few years ago when I first got my main work box, a Dell with a Pentium 4 at 3 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. I don't thing anybody's eager to run Vista on this kind of hardware, and for the great majority of us, the OS stays the same throughout the life of the box -- there ain't gonna be no upgrading in this office, that I can tell you.

Among the things I'm not happy with are IE 7, which looks better than IE 6 but is dog-slow and doesn't allow me to use it as a full FTP client (which I can still do by opening a "My Computer" window from XP itself, thankfully).

And much of the speed I enjoyed overall when running a fresh XP box has evaporated over the years -- and I have neither the administrator's access nor anybody in tech support who will do anything but wipe the whole box without backing up any of my data (our main publishing system has remote servers, and so our local boxes have no other network storage or backups aside from CD-R discs).

One thing I can tell you is that my 2003-era iBook G4 with OS X 10.3.9 is runniing just as well today as it did when we got it five years ago. Wish I could say the same for XP.

As far as my own boxes, I have one Windows 2000 install left that I never turn on. I'll probably pull the drive at some point and run OpenBSD or Debian on it. I haven't done a Windows install in over a year -- I do have a Win 2000 disc if I need to do it.

I got tired of not wanting to pay for software like MS Office and Adobe Photoshop -- and not wanting to steal it, either, like most of the people out there.

That's why free, open-source software like Linux, the various BSDs and the thousands of applications that run with them are a complete godsend. Why let a couple of very powerful, very rich corporations have such a stranglehold over our technological lives? And no, you're not sticking it to the man by stealing his software either. Two wrongs do not make any kind of right. They shouldn't charge so much, but you shouldn't pirate it either. And with things like Linux, you don't have to.

Yeah, there are quite a few hardware vendors who, like Microsoft and Apple, don't provide open-source drivers for non-proprietary systems and also don't open up their hardware and software specs so others can create those drivers. But there are many vendors who do, who want to create a whole lot of goodwill with the techy-geeky types who run Linux or BSD, because they know these are the kind of people who help others -- both individuals and companies large and small -- make decisions on what kind of hardware and software to use.

And while you can safely run Mac's OS X without a cadre of antivirus and third-party utility products, you can't do that with any version of Windows. Once you pay, you've got to keep on paying to safeguard your system, and even then you can run into plenty of problems.

Don't get me wrong -- Linux, as it exists in today's distributions, is not perfect. But it's getting better all the damn time. And it remains free. And not just free of cost, but free as in freedom.

I'm not saying the world of nonfree software should go away, but for the great majority of users out there, free is what works the most -- and the best.

Free software exists because people want it that way. Most of the developers working on the Linux kernel don't work for free, though many do. Companies that stand to gain from open-source software pay these coders to work on projects that matter to their business. And we all benefit.

I'm not one of those people who say it's Linux or bust. That's why I've done quite a bit of work with OpenBSD especially, as well as NetBSD and FreeBSD. The now open (see, it's in the name) OpenSolaris is going through a rocky patch with its community, but it's yet another alternative, especially for servers. I'm also rooting for projects like Haiku to add more diversity to the desktop.

You see, it's not about free vs. nonfree (although it kind of is). It's about choice, avoiding vendor lock-in and the abuse that comes from that, and about the innovation that comes only from competition. Do you think Microsoft would be working on a next-generation operating system if all these free alternatives weren't holding its feet to the fire? I don't think so.

To sum up, I wholeheartedly believe that freedom on our computers and other devices (be they phones, music players, e-book readers, video devices or just about anything else) is vital to our freedom as a collective people and more importantly as individuals.

So I started with XP's swan song and ended with a "free as in freedom" diatribe. Until next week, that's it from me.

I did an install of FreeBSD 7 on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) a couple of weeks ago for a number of reasons.

First, I wanted to see how the new FreeBSD would run. It's supposed to be light years faster than the previous releases, at least in server situations, and I'm very much interested in how it performs on the desktop as well.

Besides Linux, which I'm still running plenty, I'm determined to see what the non-Linux alternatives have to offer. Due to it being the first BSD I could successfully install on my VIA C3 Samuel test box, I began with OpenBSD, a system I continue to be very impressed with. Sure, I had to do a bit of reading in order to do the install, but I followed the FAQ and was able to get a working system very quickly.

The Linux kernel is a funny thing. A new kernel should mean increased functionality, but for me and my old-and-getting-older machines, the newer the kernels, the more functionality I lose.

I hadn't updated Debian Lenny in a while on the $0 Laptop (the Gateway Solo 1450). When I did it today, I noticed a new kernel being added to the system: 2.6.24-1.

Now I have three kernels in Debian: 2.6.18 (a holdover from Etch), 2.6.22 (my first Lenny kernel) and now 2.6.24.

I didn't think about the new kernel when I next booted into Lenny, but when I did, I soon discovered that my sound card didn't work anymore. I looked at all the settings, tweaked a bit here and there, but still nothing.

Then I had an idea. I rebooted and loaded 2.6.22, and sound returned.

That's a curious thing. The Gateway uses the ESS 1988 Allegro PCI sound chip, so I imagine that anybody who also uses this chip and is running Lenny will run into problems.

Here's a bug report on the problem via Google Groups. It's Bug No. 464191. Here's the same thing on the Debian site.

If some of the commenters are correct, it appears that sound quit working due to removal of a binary blob:

I am also left with a mute laptop, a HP 6100 with ESS Technology ES1988 Allegro-1 (rev 12) sound chip. Matìj Laitl seems to be spot in his post since in I found this in Debian kernel changelog :

linux-2.6 (2.6.23-1) unstable; urgency=low

* Remove binary only firmwares for:

- ESS Allegro/Maestro3

While I understand and support the whole "up yours, binary only
firmwares" view, I also do like having sound. Is there any chance of
getting the needed firmware in kernel or as a module in Debian.
Package alsa-firmware-loaders doesn't seem to handle a module for
these chips.

Cheerio,
Mikko Nurminen

And here's a subsequent message:

So now I've got to recompile my kernel just to have sound? How nice. I haven't had to do that since about 1998. I guess this is good enough reason as any to remove Debian from my laptop. Sad too, it's been Debian since before Woody was released.

...Rob

-------------------------------

In Debian Etch, the 2.6.18 kernel controlled the Gateway's CPU fan without intervention. CPU fan control can be implemented in later kernels with a line in /etc/rc.local that shuts the fan off, after which it is managed fine by ACPI. Dropping the line into rc.local is not as easy as doing nothing, but it's not the worst thing in the world, either.

Luckily going from Debian Etch to Lenny made the laptop's Alps touchpad work pretty much close to perfect. There were a few bugs in Etch in regard to this touchpad that are probably never going to get fixed, and Icredit the GNOME and Debian teams with addressing these bugs and making the most recent versions of the GNOME desktop in Lenny a joy to use on this very laptop.

Note: The best distros so far when it comes to configuring the Alps touchpad in the Gateway are Ubuntu (7.10 and 8.04 beta), Debian Lenny and PCLinuxOS 2007. The best Linux kernel for the Gateway Solo 1450 is 2.6.18 (although later kernels can be tamed, as I say above). Honorable mention goes to Puppy Linux, all recent versions of which don't allow tap-to-click, which is better than not allowing tap-to-click to be turned off.

---------------------------------

But back to sound in Lenny. Will anybody else notice? Will the Debian team patch the kernel? I certainly hope so. Just this morning I was thinking about how stable Debian (even the less stable Testing branch) is on this laptop.

And then my sound goes away.

It's enough to send one running into the arms of Ubuntu. I'd hate to think that Debian is going to tell users with these specific sound chips to take the proverbial long walk off a short pier.

In other news: My initial excitement in regard to FreeBSD 7 managing the Gateway's CPU fan with no intervention has given way to slight dismay. Today when booting into FreeBSD, the fan blasted away as if my previous computing sessions with the OS had never happened. Come to think of it, the same thing happened to me with DesktopBSD recently. There's something about FreeBSD and this laptop that makes working ACPI a very intermittent thing.

Along the same line: I tried to get ACPI working in OpenBSD 4.2 on the Gateway. I don't have OpenBSD installed on this hard drive, so I used the live CD (which, by the way, is not easy to find but is a very useful tool). I followed instructions elsewhere to implement ACPI. But as far as fan control goes, nothing happened, and I have no clue as to how to proceed. I'll wait for OpenBSD 4.3 and try again. Or maybe a solution of some sort will fall into my lap(top).

Let's just say that if I could get OpenBSD to tame the Gateway CPU fan, I'd be using the security-rich OS a whole lot more. It's been great on the $15 Laptop, which has neither ACPI capability nor a noisy fan. The old Compaq has a relatively quiet fan that runs all the time; and yes, I prefer that to one that is silent 95 percent of the time, and loud the other 5 percent (or loud 100 percent of the time with no ACPI control).

And finally: It's time I fixed the broken PCMCIA slot in the Gateway. The part only costs $20, but I remember the last time I opened up the laptop's case. It's not exactly a fond memory. After pulling about 20 screws out, I still couldn't get the thing all the way apart.

I was able to do what I needed to pull out the broken power plug and solder leads to a new one to the top of the PC board, which, if I could get out of the case would probably never get put back in.

I wonder if I can even get the old PCMCIA card slot out of the damn thing. Still, $20 is worth gambling. I'd love to take my Orinoco WaveLAN PCMCIA 802.11b card out of the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt, circa 1999) and use it with the newer and faster $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450, circa 2002).

Absolutely final note: Here at the Daily News, we've been trying to get the comments working properly in Movable Type 4. The whole point is to not allow anonymous comments, since this blog, in particular, gets probably 500 spam comments a day, and all the legit comments are mixed in between. It makes a lot of work for the blogger. To see how it's supposed to look, go to our new pro wrestling blog.

We're moving to a sign-in-only comments model with many choices of sign-in: Movable Type native (new in MT 4), Typekey, OpenID, Live Journal, and a few others I've never heard of. But at this point, we can't get the code working due to blog-rebuild issues.

Any of you who use Movable Type heavily probably know the pain of which I speak. But things should be resolved by mid-April. That's the plan anyway. Until then, I'm sorry that you can't comment on the blog itself. But if you do have a comment, please e-mail me at steven.rosenberg@dailynews.com, and I will either turn it into a new post, or attach it to the relevant post itself.

Coming up: A review of Dru Lavigne's "The Best of FreeBSD Basics," and a look at the Ubuntu 8.04 beta (yes, I'm reviewing a beta release; I usually don't run beta software, much less review it, but the anticipation of Ubuntu's forward-looking LTS release made me do it).

First off, when I'm in X, using Twm, exiting the window manager (and X) hangs the box. Ctrl-alt-backspace gets me back to a console. I have a feeling that even though X looks good, there's some configuration work I need to do.

Secondly, I tried to build a couple of ports. Scite didn't work. It said it needed GTK2 instead of GTK1. Does that mean installing Dillo first screwed things up for Scite? Anyhow, I only installed Scite because I couldn't find Geany in /editors ... turns out it's in /devel. In the interim, I installed Ted. It took over a half-hour. In the middle, I installed Geany as a package, not a port, and it installed in maybe 20 seconds.

So if you've got time and don't want to install too much, ports are great. I just don't have that kind of time.

While I was all set to slap the Ubuntu 8.04 beta on the $0 Laptop (the Gateway Solo 1450 with 1 GB of RAM), I had the FreeBSD 7 install CD already burned ... and while it didn't work so well on the $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), it booted right up on the Gateway.

After a few OpenBSD installs, during which I followed the well-written FAQ religiously (and as a result had no trouble whatsoever), I felt I was more than ready to throw FreeBSD on the laptop.

And while the FreeBSD Handbook is legendary for its comprehensiveness, I figured I could just fly by the seat of my proverbial pants.

And so I did.

Things were going well before I did a thing: the FreeBSD 7 installer automatically managed the Gateway's CPU fan. I'm able to get most Linux distros to do this with some easy configuration work once the install is done, but I have no clue whatsoever how to accomplish this very task in OpenBSD and NetBSD, no matter how hard I've tried. But having FreeBSD do it automatically is a great thing, indeed.

Once in fdisk, I deleted the PCLinuxOS partition and replaced it with one for FreeBSD. I created a 500 MB swap "slice," then one big slice for the rest. I followed the instructions for the rest of the install.

I chose the generic "user" array of packages, along with X, and once I went through all the menus and the system was installed from the first CD (I didn't bother to download or burn the ISOs for discs 2 and 3).

The last time I tried a FreeBSD install -- quite some time ago -- I chose a whole bunch of packages (or was it ports?) for my default install, and my partition ran out of space before the whole thing finished.

So this time I figured it would be better to start with the basic install and X. After using OpenBSD with its basic install (Fvwm window manager, Lynx browser ... and quite a bit more), I figured I could get around well enough in the basic FreeBSD install to make things happen.

After the install, I booted to a login prompt. After logging in, I did startx and found myself in the Twm window manager. I needed to test whether or not my static IP was working. I became the superuser and tried to ping google. Nothing. I pinged local machines on the network, and everything was fine.

I thought networking was broken and searched awhile for a solution.

If I even had Lynx (which is in the default install of OpenBSD) I would've tried it first, but even that text-only browser is not preinstalled.

Like I said, after awhile, I suspected that I was having trouble with ping and not with networking.

In OpenBSD, I've always installed packages, never ports, but since I opted in the FreeBSD install to download the ports tree, I figured I'd try to install my first port.

I needed a Web browser. So I started with Dillo.

This time I did consult the FreeBSD Handbook. I followed the instructions, going into the ports directory for Dillo, then running:

# make
# make install
# make clean

I read another paragraph down and learned that I could have just done:

# make install clean

At any rate, I did have Internet connectivity (despite the inability to ping Internet IPs, as root or otherwise), since files began downloading and building. In addition to Dillo itself, I needed GTK plus a bunch of other stuff. It took quite a long time -- for me anyway. The whole process lasted maybe 10 minutes. I'm used to apt-get install dillo ... and a minute later it's done.

But I do understand -- if tentatively -- the whole philosophy behind ports, and while the whole thing looks complicated, it worked perfectly.

I ran dillo from an xterm window and had a working Web browser.

I'm sure someone will enlighten me as to why this doesn't work:

# ping google.com

I imagine it has something to do with the firewall, but at any rate, I did install FreeBSD 7, I do have Internet working, I've got a browser running, and ACPI fan management and automatic configuration of X were perfect without any intervention from me.

Truth be told, it's more than most Linux installs can do.

While I couldn't imagine sticking with Fvwm in OpenBSD, I've grown quite fond of it -- I pretty much like it better than Fluxbox at this point. I'd hazard to say that I won't stick with Twm in FreeBSD, but it could grow on me in much the same way -- especially since, if I'm correct, Fvwm is based on Twm).

Final note: Why didn't I just install DesktopBSD or PC-BSD, you ask? Here's my answer: While I'm OK with running KDE, I'm not exactly comfortable with it. I really wanted to experience FreeBSD in a more, shall we say, "organic" way. After having such a good experience with OpenBSD, I see the value in building your own desktop, adding the apps you want and keeping everything a bit lighter.

If, as in the world of Linux, there was a FreeBSD-based project that allowed for an easy install with a full desktop based on Fluxbox, Fvwm, Xfce, JWM ... or even GNOME, I would be all over it. But the choices in DesktopBSD and FreeBSD (KDE and KDE, although I remember somebody telling me that DesktopBSD does install Fluxbox) don't exactly move me.

And since, like in OpenBSD, the basic FreeBSD install goes so well, I'm happy to start at the beginning.

Absolutely final word: Every time I write about a BSD project, I feel the need to praise the extensive, high-quality documentation that goes with it. The OpenBSD FAQ and man pages, the FreeBSD Handbook and man pages -- both have been and continue to be invaluable resources worth much more than their cost (which just happens to be "free"). It's one area in which the BSD projects are well ahead of their Linux counterparts, which generally feature documentation that is smaller in quantity, often out of date and lesser in quality. I wish it weren't so, but that's what I've seen.

OK, just one more thing: The fact that OpenBSD automatically configured the sound card in the $15 Laptop (the Compaq Armada 7770dmt), something no Linux distribution has ever done, coupled with FreeBSD's instantaneous management of the CPU fan in the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), something done as well only by Linux kernel 2.6.18 (and with a little fiddling in subsequent kernels) is nothing short of astounding -- and a sign, in my little world at least, that Linux needs to watch its back.

Yes, competition, even for the hearts and minds of geeks, is a very good thing, indeed.

We go through this every six months: Ubuntu brings out a new release, and by the time release day comes around, it's murder to get enough bandwidth to grab the damn thing and make a new disc out of it.

And no, I don't have any recent Ubuntu installs that I can upgrade, so I need the full ISO.

Hence, I'm downloading a Ubuntu 8.04 beta right now.

I'm excited about this Ubuntu release for a number of reasons:

1) Even though I had problems with 7.10 on my Gateway laptop, that version of Ubuntu allowed me control of my Alps touchpad that is hard to come by in other Linux distributions. OK, so PCLinuxOS 2007 was able to do it, but otherwise I've either got tap-to-click or not ... and I'd like to have a choice in the matter.

2) I'm not a huge fan of upgrading every install on a six-month schedule. Some things I'm happy to upgrade twice a year. Some not. My problems with Ubuntus 7.04 and 7.10 put me off of the very popular distro for awhile. I went back to 6.06 LTS on one install and enjoyed it immensely. But why even think about staying with an install for up to three years? I'll tell you:

3) From the Firefox 3 beta to a bleeding-edge GNOME implementation ... OK, I can't find much else, but the point is that Ubuntu is front-loading this release with the latest of everything. Normally, I'm the kind of person who gravitates to stable, not experimental, but in this case -- with a long-term support release -- there should be plenty of time to shake out the bugs, so to speak. I imagine it'll be like running a less-broken Debian Sid (and hopefully not a more-broken one) that will cycle its way through Lenny-ness, on to a stable Etch-like state. Or at least that's what I'm hoping for.

It's a funny thing -- Ubuntu. I think this 8.04 release -- given its LTS status, and the general maturation of the Linux desktop over the past couple of years -- is more make-or-break and less just-another-in-the-cycle for the Ubuntu community. I'm hopeful that vendors like Dell will latch onto 8.04 and boost its profile by preinstalling it wherever and whenever they can.

Like I said, while I did abandon Ubuntu 7.10 pretty quickly, I saw a great deal of progress in terms of desktop usability. While I thought I needed Ubuntu to easily run the apps my 4-year-old has grown extremely attached too -- namely Gcompris, TuxPaint and Childsplay -- I've since installed them in Debian Lenny, and then even OpenBSD, and they worked just as well. Yeah, my 4-year-old is using OpenBSD (in 64 MB of RAM and 233 MHz of CPU, no less -- and no more).

So Ubuntu is great and all -- I do recommend it, but with the right administrative help and a little training, the "average" user can find his or her way in just about any Linux distribution -- and even in OpenBSD or FreeBSD.

Oh, and here's the fast mirror I found.

And here's the ubiquitous "this many days until Ubuntu Hardy" graphic:

But first ... FreeBSD 7 will fight for supremacy on my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop. I'm starting the install now, and things look very, very good at this point: ACPI fan management is working, and I'm barely past the boot prompt. that's very encouraging. Along with this install, I will be using and reviewing Dru Lavigne's book, "The Best of FreeBSD Basics," which so far has proven to be a very useful book to have around. A full review of the book is forthcoming.