BSD & Gaming

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]

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 !

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]

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]

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]

Remember when a handheld computer was just a PDA and not a phone/camera/mini texting tool/blah blah blah as well? Personally I hate cell phones let alone text messaging, and I don’t have any real use for either. OK… I admit I have a cheap ass “pay as you go” cell shoved down into the bottom of my backpack just in case of emergency, but I don’t want it to do anything else. I love the sense of freedom I get when I accidentally leave the dam phone at home. Just try to find a stand alone PDA today, I don’t really see any except for used ones.

I had a Palm Vx for years, I loved it! Light, thin, and portable with a ton of accessories that could slip into a shirt pocket without feeling like you just put a ten pound brick in there. As time went on features like a flash card slot, sound port, and wireless capability were added to the genre – all good stuff. Then they stuffed in a cell phone too – bleh! Don’t get me started on iPads and netbooks, they’re not what I want. It’d be nice if someone served the niche market I’m in. But I know it won’t ever be profitable again with today’s market so I’ll have to settle for something else.

As promised I put together the details of my FO3 adventure and what it took to get it running. The WineHQ page had tons of good info on it, many of the people there had already done the hard part of figuring out what was needed. I just had a few minor changes for my hardware and that was about it.

I’m hoping Fallout: New Vegas will also work when I get my hands on it.

Details here – [LINK]

I eventually plan to move to a more rural area, but this has a serious downside. By that I mean having very limited access to the internet. The area I want to live in some day is currently saddled with only one real option and that is mobile broadband. Almost all of the plans I see are capped around 5gig a month depending on the provider. If you’re a serious geek a mere 5gig per month is nothing. Hell just thinking of chopping my access down that much makes me feel panicky and claustrophobic!

There doesn’t really seem to be much choice but to learn to live with the 5gig and adjust my net habits – ugh it’s a damned depressing thought. Maybe by that point I’ll have a real life (whatever that is) and won’t care, or perhaps the zombie apocalypse will occur and I’ll be too busy reloading to worry about my internet connection. Who knows.

I did think of one small thing to help cut back on bandwidth, instead of browsing with Firefox which sucks down tons of flash, pictures, and various other media… I could use the browser called Lynx.

For those not familiar, Lynx is an old school text only browser that won’t hog your bandwidth so much. It’s not pointy clicky,  but if you just want to surf, read the news, or check blogs it works great. It’s available for just about every OS (FreeBSD, linux, Windows, etc).

If you want to check it out take a look here – [LINK]

I tried, I really tried with Firefox 3 to learn to like the “Awesome Bar“. To begin with, the name bugged me, “awesome bar”… really?

Ok be good, that voice in my head told me in that sickening patronizing tone that is so prevalent in today’s politically correct culture.  The voice continued to badger me with guilt saying – just give it a try and stay open minded.

Grumbles…. fine fine whatever.

I’m a card carrying member of the “If it ain’t broke, don’t goddam fix it!” and the “Keep It Simple…ya Stupid idiot!” groups. SO, needless to say every time I hear about how someone somewhere gets what they think is a bright idea, usually in my world….it ain’t.

Well here I am many many, months later and my final conclusion? It sucks the big one. It almost never gives me anything related to what I want. Instead of saving me time it wastes it by feeding me useless crap to look at.  I end up typing the URL by hand if I know it or hitting up a search engine to find it.

Fine… it’s faster that way anyhow… so how do I get rid of it? Ahhhh the ever helpful about:config

Search for browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and change the value to “-1“, you can change it to “0” which most sites suggest, but I find it creates a slight flicker at the bottom of the URL entry field. By using a value of “-1” that flicker does not appear for me.