BSD & Gaming

Articles Include:

• Drupal on FreeBSD – part 3
• Email MX server in FreeBSD – Confguring FreeBSD as a mail MX server with Postfx
• Installing NGINX and PHP 5.3.x on FreeBSD 8.1
• Text Terminal magic with tmux
• Writing ‘bots using XMPP
• How to quickly make a bootable USB stick with FreeBSD
• FreeBSD and simple char device driver for real PCI-hardware
• BSD’s and Solaris on the Desktop. Are they ready to serve?
• Games Geeks Play!
• Why can’t offce employees get along with open source offce suites?

Get it fresh off the press by going to BSDMagazine.Org for your free copy now.

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I’ve been pretty lazy about updating my laptop with the latest version of PCBSD v8.1 and only got around to it the other day. I decided to go with a clean install this time since I had done an upgrade on previous occasions keeping everything intact. I figured the system could use a good cleaning since I tend to be a pack rat with all sorts of downloads. The fresh install forces me to do decide what is worth keeping out of the junk I accumulate.

The setup was flawless, I chose to do mine from a USB flash drive and had no problems getting everything working the way I wanted. The PBI files for the software I use are really convenient since ports can kill some serious time, not to mention the potential frustration when ports get borked up from conflicts.

I’m a happy camper with my fresh install of PCBSD (FreeBSD 8.1) and loving it so far! My laptop is getting to be a bit outdated however my resources for anything new are non-existent and it gets the job done. Plus it has just enough muscle to play most games with decent graphics so I really cannot complain.

Laptop Specs:

Toshiba X205-S9349
Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 1.80GHz
Nvidia 8600M GT
2Gig Ram

Only six more days till Fallout: New Vegas is available for those of you waiting to run out and grab a copy hot off the press. I myself am not in any rush and will not likely get a copy till long after the hoopla is over.  Bethesda’s Fallout 3 was a disappointment compared to the first two incarnations of the game, but I do admit that after watching the G4TV trailers I found myself more interested than I expected. Fallout: New Vegas is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment and not Bethesda which may be it’s saving grace.  Let’s hope Obsidian will be able to steer the Fallout franchise back on course.

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 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]

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]

According to the mailing list and the News section on FreeBSD.org the final release candidate for 8.1 is out. Check out the two links for details.

[link1]

[link2]

I’m putting together a little list of the FireFox add-ons I have found to be useful.

Please take a look at the page Recommended add-ons for FireFox.

Tiberian Sun and the Firestorm expansion pack are now free from the official Command and Conquer home page under the classic games section.

Get it now! – [LINK]

I loved Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2, they are some of my all time favorites. It’s funny I was just looking for those cd’s in my collection the other day and couldn’t find them. I just downloaded a copy and will be giving it a run with WINE as soon as I get a chance.

[Update] – WINE 1.1.31 runs Tiberian Sun just fine, in fact it’s more stable than when I ran it under WinXP Pro. I don’t know why but under XP it crashes after playing for 30-45min, none of my other games do…..  go figure.

Setup winecfg for Win98 mode and the recommended registry settings are pasted below. Enjoy!

Improving performance

• Run ‘wine regedit’, browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine. If there is no key (the stuff with folder icons) called AppDefaults, then create it
• Right-click on that key and create a new key game.exe
• Create a new subkey Direct3D. In that key create two string variables:
  DirectDrawRenderer with value opengl
  RenderTargetLockMode with value readtex

Great news for those of you awaiting a new release for PC-BSD. Version 8.0-RC [Hubble Edition] was released this month! This is great since the base is FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2 and it supports more of the new chipsets than version 7.0 did.

For example; my Toshiba X205 series laptop has one of those built in intel wireless cards and intel based front panel media controllers which works with v8, however under v7 they were unabe to function. Now they function perfectly…NICE!!

Read about it here  – [LINK]