The Linux Extremist

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 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.

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.