Too Busy

It's been nearly one and a half years since I updated this blog. I've been quite busy. I'll be resuming reviewing FOSS pretty soon. I need an outlet on the internet just like everyone else.

Testing out ScribeFire plus Foresight update

I am writing this in ScribeFire, a Firefox add on which lets you publish to blogs. You can also add pictures and videos.
Foresight Linux failed to install in Virtual Box again. This time I was using the CD. I'll try again. By the way, the installer is terrible. The fonts are ugly, it is slow and BUGGY, it still doesn't support ext4 and the partition manager is the worst I have come across in my life. Even the non-GUI command line based partition managers in FreeBSD and Arch Linux are so elegant and easy to use.
Foresight is frustrating me out but I'll give it another chance.
I'm also planning on trying out the new Pardus Linux 2009 version which comes with KDE 4.2.4. I have used the previous Pardus release as my primary OS for more than 6 months and I must say it is one of the best distros available today. Looking forward to the new one.

Update

Sorry for not updating the blog. I have been busy of late. I have an exam coming up next week. I'll start reviewing OSes and software after Tuesday. I actually tried to review Foresight Linux but the installer always managed to consistently fail halfway through the install. That just pissed me off. I had been using their DVD. I downloaded their CD so I'll try it out on Tuesday.

Opera 10 with awesome qt4 interface!!

Finally a usable Opera release with the qt4 interface is here. I don't think I need to remind you of how ugly Opera used to look on *nix with its old qt3 interface especially on Gnome. The latest builds of Opera 10 are available here : http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/snapshot-4453/
These will get outdated soon. You'll get the latest links by following the Opera developer blog : http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/

Here are some screen shots of Opera 10 beta build 4453 with the qt4 interface:

Transfers tab had been renamed to Downloads

My First FreeBSD Fling

Hello FreeBSD

The elusive *nix. Nobody knows about it yet it is one of the most widely used server operating systems. The wikipedia entry mentions it as the unknown giant of the internet. Huge internet portals like Yahoo! run on it. Why is it that no one knows about this widely used OS?

Please remember that I am no *nix guru. I have used a lot of Linux distributions (mostly Debian based) in the past two and a half years. I don't know anything about programming but I don't mind messing around at the command line. In fact I am a medical student whose main hobby is Linux. Weird but true.

I have tried at least three times before to get FreeBSD installed on my laptop (a three year old Think Pad R60) but failed spectacularly all three times. I didn't like the ncurses like installation interface nor did I like the unfriendly options I had to select through. But this time I did it. OK, it's in a Virtual Box environment but still, come on, I've got a working FreeBSD 7.2 install.

All you need is lots of patience. First of all you need to read through the documentation available here : http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html

It's given very systematically. You can use it as you go through the installation process step by step.

I downloaded the three CDs instead of the DVD. This is because the download server didn't support resuming and my internet connection is not very stable. So I minimized the risk of download failure and downloaded the distribution in three CDs. You only need the first CD to have a FreeBSD install. But in order to have a graphical environment you need the other CDs.

Installation

I used Virtual Box 3.0.0 Beta on Linux Mint 7. I allocated around 950MB RAM and 128 MB video memory to the virtual machine and gave it an 8GB hard disk. This is more than enough as the minimum requirements for the OS are really low. I recommend at least 512MB RAM if you intend to use KDE or GNOME as your desktop environment.

I booted the first CD and the program called sysinstall started automatically. I am not going to waste time and space by going through the installation screen shot by screen shot like most of those Ubuntu worshiping sites. The installation procedure is given in detail in the official documentation. Screen shots are provided for each and every step. And PLEASE FOLLOW THE DOCUMENTATION FOR EVERY STEP. I skipped some steps during my previous attempts and ended up with handicapped installs. Curiosity kills the cat. But curiosity is also the fuel of science.

I assigned the whole disk for the OS. I selected to install GNOME packages so the second and third CDs were required. I forgot to select Firefox from the package list. Anyway I learned how to use the Ports installation method by compiling Firefox.

After the install I booted into the OS and I was asked to enter the user name and password to login. After that I got a welcome note from the FreeBSD team but no graphical environment. So I typed in startx and something like the default x login screen came out but everything froze. I had to do a hard reboot. I expected to see the GNOME login screen after typing startx but it never showed up. I googled a bit and came upon this :

In order to make the most of your new GNOME Desktop, you will want to start all of the GNOME-related services at boot-time. If you wish to take full advantage of GNOME, add the following to /etc/rc.conf:

gnome_enable="YES"

So I decided to edit the file from the console and typed nano /etc/rc.conf

I always found nano installed in almost every Linux distribution but it wasn't there in this *nix system. I googled again and the FreeBSD site directed me to use ee. Yup, the editor's called ee. So I entered this:

#ee /etc/rc.conf

ee has a very user friendly interface. Just scroll to the bottom of the file, add the required lines and hit Esc. Then select save and save it. You need to be a root user to do this. If you are not, then type:

$su

Enter the root password and then open up the rc.conf file with ee.

It is not recommended to use the root account on *nix systems unless you know what you are doing. The su command gives temporary root powers to the user.

After you have edited the file type : startx

The GNOME login screen will appear and you will be able to login to your FreeBSD installation.

Installing Software

There are two ways to install software on FreeBSD system. One is to use pre-compiled binary packages and the other is to compile it from source using the ports system. I chose to use the latter as the former is no different from apt-getting packages. It might not be the same as apt but ports is more different from apt than pkg_add is. I like learning new things.

You should have selected the to install the Ports tree during the install. You can do it later also by bringing up the sysinstall tool.

Basically you have the whole application list arranged in categories in the /usr/ports folder. Categories like editors, www, net etc. can be found. This is just like the way most graphical package mangers arrange available software in to categories. The only difference is that here it is arranged as folders. So you can use your file browser to go through the huge lists.

When you enter a category you find the folders for the available software. Enter those folders and you will find a folder containing the sources and some installation scripts.

Forget all that. Let's move on to the part where you get software installed.

Fire up the terminal in GNOME, and type su and enter the password to become root. Then cd to /usr/ports

#cd /usr/ports

I'm assuming you have got your network up and running as you had configured it during the install.

Say you wanted to install htop, an interactive process viewer.

Perform a search using this syntax

make search name=''name of the application without the quotes''

I searched for htop and the path to the ports directory for htop was displayed.

cd to the directory. In this case /usr/ports/sysutils/htop

After this you are supposed to type 'make', then after the process has finished, 'make install' and then later 'clean' to clear out the temporary files. You can combine this into 'make install clean'

So type:

#make install clean

As soon as you type this the program checks for the source code and if it is not available it downloads it from the server. After that the configuration starts. If all the dependencies are not met even they will all be downloaded, configured, compiled and installed. Yay! No dependency hell here.

After the initial configuration the program compilation starts and then the installation. Some compiling time options might appear depending on the program. Select what is appropriate.

Compiling will take time depending on the size of the source code. Firefox took over 30min for me while htop took less than half that time. Don't try compiling OpenOffice or KDE, it's better to install these from the pre-compiled binaries or else you'll be staring at the compiling screen for hours.

After the install is done you will find your program in the GNOME menu.

The first program I compiled was Firefox 3, even before htop.

Compiling from source has never been more easier.

Conclusion

I like FreeBSD now. I have fell in love with Ports. Compiling from source has its own advantages as you can specify several compile time options and the compiled program is better optimized for your particular system. And it feels so damn geeky! I love it.

I've been running FreeBSD for more than 10 hrs now and I haven't had a single crash other than the initial trouble with getting GNOME to work.

There are several features in FreeBSD which make it a server guy's best friend (like jails and stuff) but this is just the beginning for me. I hope I learn more about this great operating system which has stood the test of time and M$.

I'm looking forward to a great experience from FreeBSD. Kudos to the FreeBSD team for creating Ports. :)

My Current Distro

Right now I am using Linux Mint 7 Gloria. A brilliant distribution. In my opinion all linux newbies should try out this before any other distribution.

Welcome

Welcome to this new technology blog. I intend to blog about linux and open source in general. I have been distro hopping for about two and a half years now. So i do consider myself to be an advanced linux user. I might review linux distributions if possible. Anyway, let's see where this leads me.