The Linux Extremist

Domain squatting is one of the more unpleasant facts of online life. It’s rare that one gets a glimpse into the attitudes of people who do it, but just such an insight was provided by a ZDNet article regarding the stockpiling of 3 letter .eu domains.

According to the article, a gentleman named Andrew Hooper wanted to buy a domain for his newborn son, named Christopher James, presumably so the lad could have a space reserved for a future website. However, the domain with his initials had been purchased by a squatter company called “Really Useful Domains”.

This is kind of surprising as the people who manage the .eu domain, EUrid, have been cracking down on spurious registrations recently. They just dragged 400 American registrars to court for having done so. However this particular company is in the clear because they did it through a Canadian third party. If Mr. Hooper wants the domain, he’s going to have to fork over €1500. Somehow, I doubt he will.

Domain registry is a questionable business to begin with. The biggest registrar, Go Daddy, just postponed an IPO largely because they’re not making any money and fortunately stockbrokers have rediscovered the connection between making money and what the share price should be. OK, most of the time.

But this kind of petty squatting can only be described as dire. What makes it even more unpalatable is what the owner of Really Useful Domains had to say about it - when queried by ZDNet about the ethics of stockpiling domains, and asked if it wouldn’t be better if it was not allowed, he replied -

“I think it’s a very idealistic approach and, if you could guarantee every human on the planet would adhere to that, it would be fine, but it’s not…I’m afraid if they didn’t put enough rules into enforce it, you only need one person in the globe to not adhere to that and we’d all wring our hands.”

In other words, he’s saying that because one online entrepreneur would take advantage of this, he’s perfectly entitled to do so himself.

Just because something is not expressly forbidden does not make it moral. Just because something can be done does not mean it should be done. Just because there is no authority to say something is wrong does not automatically make it right. These notions are not just an argument, they are the foundation of ethics. We should act towards the highest ideals, not guage ourselves against the lowest common denominator.

Let’s be clear, this kind of stockpiling is a form of extortion. It’s trying to get a business or individual backed into a corner, whereby their trade is inhibited by lacking a particular domain, and they have to pay exhorbitant fees in order to get out of the bind. Fortunately, it’s very, very rare that such a situation does not have an alternative. It’s simply not a good business to be in. It’s not a good nor moral way to make money.

To their credit, EUrid seem to agree. As quoted by ZDNet, the EUrid representative said “We’re not particularly fond of this.” Quite. One hopes that they will tighten their rules in the near future. Until then, I hope that Mr. Hooper found a suitable alternative for his newborn son. There is likely a world of choice awaiting him, provided he uses a little creativity. And perhaps that’s the best way to foil the plans of those who are relying on people in his situation to be otherwise.

Presumably, we’re moving into an era where Microsoft is going to play nicely; I believe this about as much as I would believe Madonna saying she was going to stop producing crap albums, but that’s what they say they’re going to do. Unlike Madonna, however, they’ve not only made this commitment, they did so in writing: in their recently announced “12 Principles”, they stated they were not going to penalise hardware manufacturers who install non-Microsoft software.

Terrific. The likes of Dell and HP should be able to poke their heads out and offer laptops with Linux on them. Or at the very least, they should be able to offer laptops without any operating system on it at all, which would be a very easy starting point. However, a month after Microsoft’s announcement, these laptops are proving difficult to come by. In fact, in some countries, one can’t find suitable hardware at all.

I may be a curmudgeon, but it goes against my principles to pay for an operating system I’m never going to use. I simply refuse to pay for a machine that has a Microsoft tax on it, no matter how hidden. Still, if one does a straw poll of major manufacturers, there’s little sign of freedom breaking out, particularly in the United Kingdom.

It really should not be that problematic; in addition to being devoid of an operating system, the hardware needs of a Linux / BSD user are fairly simple:

1. A PC should have an Nvidia graphics card, as ATI’s Linux and FreeBSD support is so dire, and…

2. In the case of laptops, wireless networking should be provided by an open source compatible chipset; Intel’s Centrino chipset is the most commonly used.

As near as I can tell from searching on Google, the number of UK hardware vendors accommodating this need is approximately zero. None. Bugger all. The closest is Novatech, who laudably have machines that come without any installed operating system, however their laptops either have the dire Intel Extreme Graphics (the only thing extreme about it in my experience is how awful it is) or again, the dreaded ATI.

One can get these machines from the United States; however, there is the rather prickly matter of customs duties, and of course, the United States and UK are two countries divided by different keyboards and power plugs. I’d really rather keep my £ key, thanks very much and not fry myself on your funny electricity.

What is frustrating about this situation is that it is a perfect market opportunity; surely some vendor can be clever enough to offer blank laptops that are ideally suited to those using Open Source operating systems. If not Dell or HP or Fujitsu Siemens, there should be at least one bright spark who realises that the rise of Open Source has presented a unique opportunity to satisfy a relatively well paid yet fussy market.

For the moment, the wait goes on. Perhaps it will take some time for the 12 principles to sink in. Perhaps the 12 principles are utter rubbish. Perhaps some entrepreneur is gearing up right now to accommodate this market space. But until this development occurs, it appears that too many of us are going to left be crying out, “Wherefore art thou blank laptop?”

One of my favourite jokes goes like this: a new recruit to the French Foreign Legion is being shown by his commanding officer around his first post, which is a fortress in the middle in the desert.

The officer shows the private where the men eat, sleep, and of course, where the latrines are. At the end of the tour, he asks, “Do you have any questions?”

“Oui, mon capitain.” the recruit replies, “what do you do when you have urges?”

“Urges?” the officer asks.

Making some suggestive movements, the recruit says with a nervous wink, “You know, urges.”

“Ah.” the officer says, pointing to a camel tied up in the courtyard, “well most of us use Daisy over there.”

Not fancying the idea of making love to a four legged animal, the recruit decides it’s best to stay away from Daisy. One month passes, two months, then three. Finally, frustrated beyond all endurance, the recruit runs screaming into the courtyard and leaps onto the camel, making love to it with all his might, and then collapses into a heap on the ground. The officer then speaks to the young man:

“Well, I hope you’re happy…but most of us use Daisy to ride to the brothel in the next town.”

Speaking of people who could probably only get a date of the four legged variety, the terrorists who have blighted air transport in and out of Britain probably don’t realise the consequences of what they’re doing. It was already inconvenient to fly. Flying is right down there on my list of experiences along with dentistry: one stands in line to check in, one stands in line to get through security, one stands in line at Duty Free, one stands in line to get on the plane, one stands in line to get through passport control on the other end, one stands in line to wait for baggage that never comes, and one has to look at a line of drivers to either find your dear ones hidden behind a Hells Angel who is moonlighting as a limo driver, or a driver who has so badly misspelled your name that he’s turned it from English into Martian. Of course the trip itself involved being crammed into a space designed for circus midgets while stewardesses who in their spare time probably work as “Katrina of the Whip” fling sandwiches at you which are hard enough to take out an eye. The terrorists, in their continuingly futile efforts to make themselves seem anywhere near macho rather than hung like a baby earthworm, have just made this entire experience even more unbearable.

This is where technology steps in. I don’t have to go on a business trip, and neither do you. In fact one doesn’t even have to leave home. Good men and women have tirelessly worked to bring broadband to the point of overcapacity to ensure that video conferencing, e-mail and document sharing are almost instantaneous. Terrorism will likely encourage this transition from jet age business to information age business.

Some might say, OK, if technology is wonderful, what about the use that these worst sort of “animal lovers” make of the internet? It’s true that Al Qaeda uses the ‘Net to communicate, but so does the FBI, CIA and MI6. In fact, maybe Al Qaeda’s operatives should try to read something other than the Koran, because, thanks a lot fellas, but communicating in the open like this helps our boys find out who you are.

Truly, we technologists have a vital role to play in the War on Terror. We need to continue to press on with developing alternatives to face to face business to sustain our economies, and to assist the authorities in tracking down terrorists who use technology for their own malign ends. We are footsoldiers in this war on terror. So, infidel geeks of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but some bandwidth.

After I completed a trial of PC BSD on one of my desktop machines, I was looking forward to moving it over to Fedora Core 5. Then I discovered something which stayed my hand; apparently wireless support for Fedora Core 5 is quite weak. Unlike Ubuntu and PC BSD, it does not come with the Madwifi drivers for Atheros cards as standard. There are plenty of how-tos, but the problem is that if wireless is the only connection one has for a particular machine, you’re fairly stuck - most require downloading drivers, through a connection that is more deus ex machina than anything practical.

Frustrated, I thought about moving to OpenSuse instead. After all, I’d used Suse before and never had this problem. However since version 10.1, Suse is moving backwards in this regard, there is no in-built support for Atheros cards.

This is disappointing, particularly since Ubuntu’s support for Atheros cards is perfect.  It also exposes the one Achilles heel of many Linux distributions; while it is outstanding in most ways, support for wireless still remains a problem.

With the rise of wireless internet and the increasing use of laptops, one would think that development teams would be pushing onward towards greater compatibility with a variety of wireless chipsets, not removing support for cards which have long had that support.  However, some distributions seem to disregard wireless almost entirely: for example, Fedora Core’s support is extremely poor. So far as I can tell, they solely support the Intel Centrino chipset “out of the box”.  This is maddening as Fedora’s support for everything else from sound cards and graphics cards is outstanding.

Fortunately, the team at Ubuntu is much more clued up about such things; their wireless support, which was always good, appears to be improving over time.  This may partially explain why Ubuntu is now the most popular distribution; it involves no ripping of hair out in order to enjoy the full benefits of wireless networking.  The developers of PC BSD also appear to understand this; while BSD’s support for wireless chipsets is still fairly narrow (they support Intel Centrino wireless and Atheros) at least this is more than what Fedora Core has on offer.

I suggest that developers working on Fedora and OpenSuse need to realise that the Linux Revolution could be hindered by a refusal to tackle this issue.  Not everyone wants to hack around with their machine merely to get onto the internet.  It will deter the nervous.  Or it may just mean that the future will belong to Ubuntu.

A geek cannot live on caffiene alone. In my experience, another staff of life of technology folk is booze. Indeed, I’ve been employed by companies where you didn’t have to be a borderline alcoholic to work there, but it certainly helped. An entire year of my life is somewhat muddied by the haze of having drunk way too much due to work associated recreation. After that, I promised myself never to work in the City of London again.

I digress. While I’ve put the days of tequila slammers and black sambuca behind me, I still enjoy a tipple now and then. My girlfriend, being a much classier and sophisticated sort than I, is fond of champagne. I like champagne too, but I must admit my knowledge of it could be summarised by the following points:

1. If it doesn’t come from the champagne region of France, it has to be called “sparkling wine.”

2. Cristal is the best. After all, Puff Daddy said so.

3. Dom Perignon was the champagne of choice in James Bond films.

4. Moet tastes like sparkling vinegar.

5. Don’t believe Tesco when they say something has won a silver medal.

Obviously, I didn’t drink champagne too often. Besides, a bottle of Krug Grande Cuvee can cost around £90 a bottle. One gets the distinct sensation of someone oily in a beret fingering one’s wallet when purchasing champagne.

Fortunately, some years ago, someone noticed that the soil around West Sussex is rather like that in the Champagne region; since that time the Nyetimber Vineyard (www.nyetimber-vineyard.com) has been producing excellent sparkling wine. Out of curiosity, I bought a bottle of Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 1998. When my lady tried it, she remarked that it tasted rather like the £90 Krug.

The only way to settle this was to try both at once. You can’t really put champagne back in the fridge after you’ve opened it, so we were going to have to drain both bottles in once sitting. The two bottle taste test was going to leave us blotto, but it would to settle the matter.

Both bottles were chilled to the same temperature and in the same conditions (they sat side by side in the fridge). Upon opening the bottles, the Nyetimber obviously had more fizz; the cork could have put my eye out. My lady and I each had two glasses, one for each wine, and yes, to enable two fisted drinking.

The first taste revealed that they were very similar in flavour, with one very big exception. I am not the sort of person who reads all sorts of different fruit flavours into what is essentially made from grapes, but the Krug had an aftertaste of wood, like it had been stored in oak vats. The Nyetimber didn’t taste of that at all. I like wood furniture, but not drinking wood champagne; I prefered the Nyetimber instantly.

My lady agreed with this analysis. Another couple of drinks and we were both wondering how long the French had gotten away with charging outrageous prices for champagne when Nyetimber was available. A few more and we were laughing at the television news.

The overall result, apart from a slight headache the next morning, was that the Krug may have more status, but the Nyetimber is better value and if you don’t like licking your coffee table, actually tastes better. It’s relatively inexpensive at £20 a bottle for the Grande Cuvee, so one can afford to drink more of it. As it’s not bling, Puff Daddy won’t drink it. As it’s English, we’re not paying for the privilege of being robbed by the French. All in all, it’s just about perfect.

A phrase which truly summarises PC BSD could be: “A good idea, but not ready for prime time”. This occured to me after I had my third Firefox crash whilst using it.

The Firefox crashes were the last, but not the only straw. After having successfully installed it, I found a number of small frustrations:

1. USB support; to put it mildly, is inconsistent. A port which would read a USB key fine at one point couldn’t see it at another. I thought this might be a problem peculiar to PC BSD; I attempted to install DesktopBSD instead this morning and found the same issues. Before any desktop variant of BSD is ready for “prime time”, this definitely needs to be addressed.

2. Firefox instability; I have never seen it behave so badly on any system before. 3 crashes in the course of one evening is unheard of. In contrast, Opera 9 appears to work well with PC BSD.

3. Fonts. I was driven mad by the system fonts (it was the font used in Konsole) that kept re-emerging and could not be changed. Some programmes were able to resist this overriding option, namely Opera 9. However, Firefox, Thunderbird and gFTP were all programmes that fell to it.

4. Booting. PC BSD appeared to boot much more slowly than Ubuntu Linux. Part of this may be perception; the “System loading…please wait” screen without any idea of progress of the boot can lead the user to think the system has hanged. I suggest that the developers of PC BSD need to give better messaging during startup so that the user can know that all is well.

5. Shut down. PC BSD is also very slow is switching off. Worse, a bug developed which meant that my PC could not shut down automatically; I had to do a fresh install to remedy the problem.

In contrast some things were outstanding; Nvidia support on FreeBSD is very, very good. Opera 9, as previously mentioned, is excellent; I believe it may be the fastest browser I’ve experienced. Kaffiene works well as a media player on this platform.

Yet there is an unfinished feeling about PC BSD, a lack of polish, an essence of a project in progress rather than a product delivered. It is, after all, on only version 1.2. Furthermore, I’d hazard a guess that there are relatively few developers working on it; hopefully this will change.

Also, I hope for more native FreeBSD software so that I can get a genuine idea of how well it compares to other OSes. In order to use some software like Realplayer, PC BSD users have to download a package containing Fedora Core Linux’s base.

Overall, it is a good start and a worthwhile experiment. For the moment, however, the PC BSD desktop is going to be switched Fedora Core 5.

One of my favourite sayings is from President Calvin Coolidge. It goes as follows:

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

With PC BSD, this proved to be the case; I am writing this post using Opera 9 on PC BSD. It’s got some rough edges, but once installed, I’ve found using this OS to be an enjoyable experience.

So what happened? I finally figured out one of PC BSD’s flaws - it doesn’t play very nicely with my KVM switch. My USB hub is plugged into it; and the keyboard is plugged into the hub. I had to move the keyboard to being plugged into the KVM switch, and voila, the keyboard functionality suddenly worked. A similar “distance” created problems using a USB key as well.

Installation of PC BSD, once you have the keyboard, is relatively painless. The graphical installer works well. Once in PC BSD, there’s not much configuration required; it worked with all of my hardware, with the exception that I had to download the latest Nvidia driver. With it, it’s beautiful.

PC BSD has made ease of installation a hallmark; one can find an extensive list of packages at www.pbdir.org. Downloading a PBDIR file, double clicking and installing a package is no more troublesome than using Windows or Mac OS X. In fact, once the rough edges are sorted out in so far as items like my KVM switch, this is an ideal OS for beginners.

It’s not entirely trouble free; perhaps its the lack of a progress bar, but the computer seems to boot very slowly. Strangely, the variant of the GIMP for PC BSD doesn’t support JPG files. Configuring this machine to use wireless was also no treat. However, the instructions, using an Atheros chipset card are fairly straightforward though definitely not fun:

1. Go to the “PC BSD” icon in the bottom left hand corner; this engages the windows-esque menu that KDE has.

2. Go to System > Konsole

3. Type “su” then your password. A new prompt, reading PCBSD will appear.

4. Type “kldload if_ath”. Hit enter. The system will process for a few seconds; the prompt will return.

5. To ensure that the system loads the wireless card driver every time, type “kedit /boot/defaults/loader.conf” and hit enter. Scroll to a line that reads ” if_awi_load=”NO” #AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 wireless NICs” After this, type in: “if_ath_load=”YES”" If you so wish, add the following note: “# Atheros wireless device”. Save and exit the editing programme.

6. On the bottom right hand side of the screen there will be an icon of a globe with a pipe coming out of it. This is for the network settings. Right click on this and select “Configure”.

7. You’ll see a screen with 3 tabs. Click on the Networks tab first. Click “Add” and then enter in the name of your wireless network and click OK.

8. You’ll get another window for Configuration. My wireless router acts as a DHCP server, so I selected that option. I clicked OK.

9. Click the Wireless tab and press Refresh. Your wireless network should be listed; it may take three to four clicks before it is detected. Once done, click the network name once and choose connect. Click OK when it asks you to accept the settings.

10. Once it’s done processing, you should be connected and remain so.

The good news is that browsing with PC BSD appears to be marginally faster than with Ubuntu. Opera 9 and Firefox are both outstanding; Opera has a slight, but detectable edge, however, which it did not with Linux.

There are still challenges in configuration; the PBI directory allows one to install Flash for Konqueror, but not Opera and Firefox. The printer, a Canon ip4000R, needs to be set up. The appearance needs to be tuned. I am concerned by gFTP crashing relatively easily.

For the moment, however, PC BSD land, while requiring persistence, and enduring some pain to arrive here, is a good place to be.

It is a beautiful morning in West Sussex. The torrid summer, at long last, appears to be fading, and the sunshine is pleasant rather than oppressive. I got up, looked out over my garden, I heard the birds singing. I got myself a coffee, and then sat at my PC. I typed in a post about my adventures with BSD. Then I switched on the news.

On the news was John Reid, the Home Secretary; he announced a plot had been foiled.  Its intent, he said was “to bring down a number of aircraft through mid-flight explosions causing a considerable loss of life”.

My intial reaction is not repeatable in polite company. My girlfriend travels by air all the time, so it’s not like I’m removed from this. I imagine her reaction is going to be just as livid when she finds out she can’t take hand luggage on the plane any longer, thanks to the terrorists.

That, however, is a minor consideration. Let’s review what the terrorists had in mind, which is very similar to what they did on 9/11. In the name of “Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate”, they intended to seize planes full of innocent men, women and children and kill them all. Unable to strike against military or political targets directly, they intend to make civilians feel unsafe in the hopes they can scare us into submission. Obviously the terrorists didn’t read about what happened when Adolf Hitler tried to bomb London in order to achieve the same aim. Here’s a clue for any terrorists reading: it failed.

What’s inexplicable is that the terrorists should be able to look at Lebanon and see the same thing; Israel hitting Beirut has fuelled defiance, not destroyed it. In Israel’s case, defiance doesn’t matter as they are going after military targets, namely Hezbollah’s infrastructure. In the terrorists’ case, as the aim is destroy our will to fight, they are pursuing means which are counterproductive to their ends. They would be better off trying to create a dance craze which causes hip injuries.

Really, the terrorists are unenlightened, uneducated jerks. Sun Tsu advised in the Art of War to “know thy enemy”; they don’t. Sun Tsu also advised, “know thyself”. I wonder if they have sufficient brain cells to remember their postal codes let alone know who they really are. People who embrace extreme ideologies tend to be those who have a weak hold on their own identity and need to find purpose and meaning in their lives by being told what to do by others.

Given this, I doubt reasoning with these people would achieve anything. So I have a suggestion: unleash Jack Bauer.

All right, I’m speaking as a “24″ junkie; I am operating under the assumption that there is a real life equivalent. However, I do admire the way that Jack Bauer deals with terrorists: I’ve seen him shoot one in the knee, break another’s fingers and use electrical shocks. I’ve seen him shoot terrorists and grab them by the wound to make them talk; this was particularly enjoyable when he did it in Season 2 to a “little rich girl” who was “playing terrorist”. The fictional organisation to which Jack belongs, the Counter Terrorist Unit, also has a specialist in causing pain to suspects.

In the West, we are rightly reticent about using torture; we regard that as the hallmark of barbaric regimes. However it’s clear that the terrorists simply do not have the same scruples that we do; it would seem they regard our reticence as a form of weakness. For example, the terrorists should be just as aggrieved by the treatment of the Muslim minority in China. The difference is, the terrorists know that the Chinese will use Jack Bauer-esque methods or worse to get them to talk, and kill them quietly as a punishment.

Our political leaders could change tactics; they could enable MI5 and the FBI to start doing things the Jack way. I doubt there would be little opposition among the general public. I suspect that they don’t do so because of fear of some very vocal special interest groups. Ironically, it is many of these special interest groups that would be most adversely affected if the terrorists did achieve their aim of global hegemony.

Meanwhile, we should compliment the police and security services in Britain for a job well done in foiling today’s plot. One can only hope that they have the tools, in the absence of a Bauer-esque mandate, to prevent further incidents. Perhaps this latest incident will serve as a reminder that this mandate would be useful.

I’ve used many distros, but up until now, it’s never been the case that I’ve been unable to install one.

I spent 3 maddening hours trying to get PC BSD to install on the machine which I listed in my previous article. In every case, the CD ROM would boot up and then freeze at the screen where one can select the graphical installation wizard; the mouse would still function, but the keyboard would not. I found myself banging on “Enter” just trying to get the graphical installation wizard to engage. To remedy this, I went through the following steps:

1. I first thought the CD ROM might have been scratched or faulty - I re-downloaded PC BSD and re-burned it. No change.

2. I then thought that it might be the Microsoft Digital USB keyboard I’m using. I swapped it for a standard PS/2 one. No change.

3. I unplugged USB entirely and just used the PS/2 keyboard. No change.

4. I thought it might have something to do with the Belkin USB 2 card that the USB was running off of. I used the standard USB 1.1 connection provided by my motherboard. No change.

5. I tested the CD ROM on my Beige Lightning PC, the specification of this is as follows:

120 GB Seagate Barracuda

GA - K8NE Motherboard

AMD Sempron 3100+ processor

Nvidia GeForce 6600 256 MB PCI Express Video Card

Creative Audigy Sound Card

Initially, this worked. However, in order to install PC BSD on that machine, I was going to have to either install an additional IDE hard drive or wipe the entire machine. As this is my main machine, I opted to install the additional hard drive. After doing that, the install again did not work, exhibiting the same behaviour.

The machine I was originally going to put PC BSD on had two IDE hard drives, so I wondered if by removing one, that would solve the problem. It didn’t.

As it was finally 1 AM, I gave up. I am reporting this as a bug to the PC BSD people. Needless to say, it’s extremely disappointing.

There are two rivals to PC BSD; DesktopBSD and FreeBSD itself. DesktopBSD will be the next port of call, and I’ll see if there is more luck to be had there.

Cousins can sometimes make one wonder how on earth people so dissimilar can be related. While I would love to get my hands on a Sidewinder missile, I have a cousin in Norway who won ridicule from the rest of the family because he volunteered to clean toilets and pick up litter rather than do his service in the military; ala Eric Idle, he gave off an impression which said, “No sir, I’m not a pacifist, sir, I’m a coward.” If that was the sole extent of his foibles, the family would be well pleased, but suffice it to say that is the least of his problems.

Linux also has a cousin, the BSD operating system, and fortunately it’s a much better relative. While I am a Linux enthusiast, I have nothing against BSD; it is Open Source, freely distributed, and also well engineered. I once did an experiment by having one my company’s e-commerce solutions (using PHP and MySQL) put on a FreeBSD server. Not too long ago, I checked on how it was doing.

I asked my friend who keeps tabs on it, “In the past 3 years, how many times has the server crashed?”

“None.”

I then asked, “How many times has it required rebooting?”

“It hasn’t.”

“Has it ever been hacked?”

“No.”

“So you’ve had no problems with it whatosever?”

“No problems at all.”

This level of performance is impressive; as a result, FreeBSD has been a solution that I’ve been happy to use whenever appropriate. After all, diversity is one of the hallmarks of Open Source, and FreeBSD adds another option to the palette of solutions one can use. However, hitherto its benefits have been largely exclusive to servers. The FreeBSD does not discourage this impression with its motto: “The Power to Serve”.

This bias is in the process of changing with the arrival of both the DesktopBSD and PC BSD projects. One of the privileges of having 4 computers in my home is that I can use one of them to try it out.

For the purposes of this experiment, I’m choosing PC BSD. There’s a reason for it - I’ve been interested in this particular project for quite some time and have been following its progress. It appears to be very promising in making BSD palatable to desktop users.

Some hardware research to prepare for the installation is a must. I will be using an old Pentium 4 machine with the following specification:

Pentium 4, 2.4 Ghz

1.5 GB RAM

Gigabyte GA-8ID533 Motherboard

Seagate Barracuda 120 GB 7200 RPM hard drive

C-Media sound card (disguised as a Philips sound card)

Nvidia GeForce 6600 256 MB RAM AGP x8 Graphics card

Fortunately, little change is required; PC BSD retains some Linux biases - for example, Nvidia support appears to be much better than that which is available for ATI. Wireless card selection is trickier than with Linux; I have been able to establish that PC BSD supports Intel wireless, such as in Centrino chipsets. I have also read that it supports wireless cards with Atheros chipsets. The wireless card on it previously was a Zyxel PCI card; however as this of the Texas Instruments ACX chipset, BSD support is less clear-cut. In its place is going an SMC SMCWPCIT-G EZ Connect PCI card which relies on Atheros. Apart from this one substitution, my setup should require no change to run PC BSD successfully and have full wireless internet and multimedia features.

There are things which I am curious about -

1. Will its rock solid stability as a server carry over in terms of performance as a desktop?

2. How well does it compare to Ubuntu Linux?

3. How much more difficult is it to set up than Ubuntu Linux?

These questions will be answered as part of this investigation. All how-tos will be posted here, along with reviews of its performance. For the moment, the wireless card is in the post, the intended computer sleeps soundly with Ubuntu on its drive; soon we will learn how well it copes with a new OS.