BSD & Gaming

Photoshop Alternative – The Gimp

admin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:39:55 +0000

Photoshop is a really powerful application, and the recent versions have some pretty amazing capabilities. The downside for somebody like me is the cost of it. While many software applications give discounts to students, that doesn’t help me because my student days are long since over. Even if I had a student discount it still requires an investment which I need for other things given the state of the economy. If I was a professional in a position where the expense was necessary it’d be worth it. However I’ve been using a free open source alternative that does everything I’ve needed so far.. The Gimp.

The Gimp has been around a really long time, I’ve been using it off and on for ages now. While I love the fact that there is a version available for FreeBSD, PCBSD, or the various linux flavors, there are even downloads compatible with Windows making it available to a huge audience. It is a quite powerful image manipulation program in it’s own right with plenty of free plugins, filters, and brushes to suit your needs.

The Gimp’s layout can throw people off balance if they are used to photoshop. Even though many of the features and tools are the same in function, they may have a different name or place to find them that can be confusing for photoshop users. There is a version available that tries to ease that learning curve with a more familiar layout called GimpShop. Since I am not a photoshop user I’ve never tried GIMPshop, but for someone interested in trying an alternative or wanting to transition over to free software it might be worth looking into.

The Gimp definitely has a slot in my “must have software” list and I think if you give it a shot I believe you’ll like it as well.

The Gimp – [LINK]

GimpShop – [LINK]

PCBSD 8.1 is now available !

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 05:03:32 +0000

PCBSD 8.1 is now available for your desktop or laptop!! What are you waiting for? Go get yourself a copy now!

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.1 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE, and KDE 4.4.5

Version 8.1 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Some of the notable changes are:

FreeBSD 8.1-Release

KDE 4.4.5

Numerous fixes to the installation backend

Support for creating dedicated disk GPT partitioning

Improved ZFS support

Bugfixes to desktop tools / utilities

Announcement – [LINK]

Release notes – [LINK]

Download via FTP mirrors – [LINK]

FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE available

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 04:48:08 +0000

FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE is available.

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights:

-zfsloader added
-zpool version of ZFS subsystem updated to version 14
-NFSv4 ACL support in UFS and ZFS; support added to cp(1), find(1), getfacl(1), mv(1), and setfacl(1) utilities
-UltraSPARC IV/IV+, SPARC64 V support
-SMP support in PowerPC G5
-BIND 9.6.2-P2
-sendmail updated to 8.14.4
-OpenSSH updated to 5.4p1
-GNOME 2.30.1, KDE 4.4.5

Announcement – [LINK]

Release notes – [LINK]

Download via official BitTorrent – [LINK]

Download via FTP mirrors – [LINK]

Historic Hangar One May Become Outpost for Smithsonian

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:07:33 +0000

Telstar Logistics reports that Hanger One could become a location for the Smithsonian. Pictures and full details on Telstar’s web site.

[LINK]

Great Dieselpunk web site

admin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:01:03 +0000

For those of you who haven’t found it yet, there is a really good Dieselpunk web site located at http://www.dieselpunks.org with tons of great information and picture galleries. Don’t waste any time go on over and take a look, it’s really worth it !

Electronic books outselling paper versions

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:47:13 +0000

In a New York Times article Amazon.com says it was selling 143 eBooks for every 100 paper copies and now sales are on the increase hitting 180 per 100. I can understand why sales are up from my own perspective. I love to read …and I love books! However years of lugging around tons of books every time I move has been a nightmare, being able to have all those hundreds of pounds of books on a few data disks…. it’s just too convenient.

It’s not an easy choice when you sentimentalize hard-copy books the way some of us do. Some books in my collection were gifts from people and those are especially hard to consider getting rid of. Every book holds a memory for me, not just the work itself… where I was, what I was doing and experiencing at the time when I read it. That experience doesn’t hold for me with the digital editions. Getting rid of my hard-copy versions is something I’ve been contemplating for some time now but not a choice I’ve been able to make yet.

NYT’s story is here – [LINK]

Apollo 11 Moon Landing, July 20th 1969

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:06:12 +0000

WIRED had an article marking today’s anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. It got me thinking about a lot of things, mainly about where we have been as a country and where we are going in the future. It’s tough to see positive things when, as a nation, we are so dispirited. It was huge events like Apollo 11 that helped us to see we can do great things and we can reach outside of our petty worldly fears and selfishness for something bigger. I just hope in today’s apologetic rhetoric we don’t rush to rewrite history into a more politically correct version forgetting the accomplishments made and losing hard won lessons.

The knowledge gained from NASA’s work has affected everything from the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the homes we live in to the technology that goes into the cars, computers, phones, and every other gadget we love. Maybe the short sighted folks in D.C. will remember that and realize that while it may cost a little to keep it fed, NASA is the “golden goose” that pays us back a thousand fold everyday.

For WIRED’s article go here – [LINK]

Nice article on PCBSD from the O’Reilly network

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:24:57 +0000

The O’Reilly folks put out a nice little article covering PCBSD’s ease of installation. I myself used FreeBSD for years compiling everything by hand contending on occasion with “dependency hell”.

Today I am definitely a PCBSD convert. PCBSD’s simple gui installer makes upgrading or new installs a snap. I also love how easy it is to install new software or upgrade existing programs using the PBI system.

Read the article here – [LINK]

Don’t forget the latest issue of BSD Magazine is available

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:14:49 +0000

Get your July issue now! It’s becoming a free monthly magazine and you can download your copy in PDF format directly from their web site.

Get the July issue here – [LINK]

Back issues are available as well – [LINK]

How to run Star Trek Online under FreeBSD with Wine

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:27:14 +0000

I finally got around to typing up what I did to get STO running on my BSD laptop. It’s quick and dirty but covers the basics.

If you want to get the details just click on article #5 to the right or click on this – [LINK]