The Linux Extremist

Both Firefox and Opera are on the cusp of releasing new versions of their browser software.  Firefox is on the fifth beta of the up and coming Firefox 3: it is the browser of choice for the new release of Ubuntu Linux.  Opera is on the second Beta of Opera 9.50 - code named Kestrel.

Comparing the two at the moment may seem unfair, given that both are works in progress.  However, the two have been going back and forth in being the best, fastest browser for Linux; and the betas are an indication of how the next round is going to shape up.  After having used both side by side for the past week, I believe I have an idea as to who is going to come up trumps.

Firefox 3 is a good, well-rounded browser.  It is reasonably quick, and with some slight modifications in “about:config” - its speed can be improved further.  There is no doubt as to why this is the standard; however, there is no doubt that the new Opera is much better.

With 9.50b, the previous sins of Opera have been forgotten: it does run Flash plugins, and whatever was throttling its performance in 9.27, has been eliminated.  I don’t have a stop watch, but speaking as a user, its throughput is much faster than it is on Firefox 3.  Admittedly, I am using a lower end machine: however Opera seems to be able to do less with more.

I am also a strong believer in the idea that the class of a browser can be seen in its font rendering.  In Firefox 3, this has apparently taken a step backward: the rendering is less sophisticated than it was on Firefox 2, and its variants such as Swiftweasel.  It somehow looks like a throwback, almost like how browsers look on Windows.   The difference can be seen in these samples:

Firefox 3
Opera 9.50

I found after several hours of using both, I much prefered using Opera: as the samples show, it’s quicker, easier on the eyes, and there is a better “finish” to it.  Firefox 3 still has the feel of a beta; there are niggles in it, for example, how the history on the URL bar drops down, that indicates it still has some way to go, that some concepts have not yet fully arrived.

Opera 9.50 simply does not feel like a beta; there are no niggles or annoyances to distract, rather, it simply works and works well.  No doubt Firefox will catch up to it again; the to and fro of this struggle is unlikely to stop.  However, for the moment, Opera is the winner.

There are only a few television shows produced today that are truly funny, in my opinion - the best of the lot is the show done on Friday nights by Ben Miller and Alexander Armstrong - their RAF “chav” sketches are utterly hilarious. Here’s an example:

And another:

I am headed off on vacation soon, amidst increasing signs that I need one badly. I’m developing a strange case of paranoia because of my company’s website; I compulsively, constantly check if our website is still performing well on Google.

Getting this right has been very difficult; a project that was initiated prior to my joining the company left the website on two separate servers, using two different technologies and a completely different domain. The redirects didn’t help; the site sank without a trace on search engines. Chaos ensued, and it’s only now, after 6 months, that I’ve been able to initiate a programme of web marketing and search engine optimisation.
The optimisation updates have primarily focused on using the mod_rewrite module to change database driven links (with parameters, such as www.whatever.com/index.php?parameter=1&otherparameter=2) into something much easier for Google to index (i.e., rational links like www.whatever.com/parameter1/otherparamter2/). This is a fairly standard procedure; what was truly bizarre was that this suggestion took a long time to be accepted by management. Since these changes were put in place, I’ve been watching, waiting, and mostly, been relieved that the changes are helping.

Still, I think it’s the fate of any internet centric person to use Google extensively. In the process, I’ve learned all sorts of little tricks; if I know the site in question that has a particular bit of information, I can ask Google to “site:whatever.com” and then search within the results. I know when to wrap quotes around a phrase and when not to do so. I know how to avoid expressions that are too general. All in all, it has replaced going to the library or buying a newspaper. However, all of this benefit does come at a cost for a webmaster; the workings of Google are maddeningly opaque. One day the site will be fully indexed, and the next, it will be shot down. One day a site will be top of the rankings, the next, it will be at the bottom.

Fortunately, the dips are disappearing in my case; the site is achieving a level of stability, albeit this may be an illusion. Someone may alter an algorithm and my site may plummet into obscurity once more. My approach is simple, do absolutely everything to prevent giving a Google an excuse to not index pages. For example, in addition to the activities I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve tried using Google Sitemaps.

I first tested these sitemaps on my private websites; I heartily recommend the Wordpress plugin for Google sitemaps, and also a tool called XML Sitemaps, which is obtainable for $15. The only problem with the latter tool is that when I used it to index my Sietch and Sith Order sites, it attempted to index the entire product catalogue of Amazon.com, which was accessible through the sites’ online stores.

That said, sitemaps are not only useful for Google, they also come in handy for Yahoo’s new Site Explorer tool, which accepts the Google sitemap protocol; I submitted both my sitemap and RSS feeds to Site Explorer and found that Yahoo’s “Splut” search engine came onto the site with a vengeance. Overall traffic has improved as a result. A sitemap for my company’s site has had similar benefits.

It is, however, a struggle to remain found rather than lost. It’s not just Google that one has to contend with, but all the other sites that are working just as hard as mine to edge ahead in the Search Engine Optimisation game. Paranoia will have to be a state of being; but fortunately, there will be a brief respite as afforded by my vacation beginning next week. I just have to force myself not to check, and if I worry, to have another cup of egg nog.

3 out of 4 of my computers run Ubuntu Linux. Breezy was all right, Dapper was great; when Edgy was released, I wondered, “Could it get any better?”

The press on the latest release, Ubuntu “Edgy Eft” 6.10, suggested that it was going to contain a lot of new approaches to the operating system, a radical departure rather than maintaining continuity. This made me nervous; everything worked well in Dapper, sometimes, in the words of Edmund Burke, “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”

However, curiousity got the better of me. I first took the plunge using my old HP Compaq nx7000 laptop. Rather than do a clean install, I opted to do an upgrade. In order to do this, I went to Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal and typed -

gksu “update-manager -c”

This then made the upgrade available.

The upgrade process itself was fairly painless. After it completed, the laptop rebooted; the speed improvement in loading was noticeable. To my relief, none of my settings had been undone. With the latest version of Swiftfox as my browser and Edgy, this 4 year old laptop was running faster than ever. Fonts were also cleaner and easier on the eyes.

I tried this upgrade next on my Savrow Katana K-90. Again, the download and upgrade process was fairly painless; however, I had to re-install ndiswrapper in order for it to work with its wireless card. Apart from this, no other changes to settings were required. However, 3D acceleration using ATI’s proprietary fglrx driver was lost in the upgrade; I am waiting for an update to the driver or the OS in order to rectify this problem. This, however, is a minor inconvenience; otherwise, the PC functions as well as it has ever done and again, boots faster.

The most problematic upgrade was for my desktop computer, which I’ve nicknamed “Beige Lightning”. While there were no issues with drivers, Edgy has problems detecting a USB keyboard. With Dapper, detection was instantaneous. However with Edgy, I’ve had to wait at the login screen while the Function button on my Microsoft Internet Keyboard flashes; when it turns a steady green, then it’s ready, but sometimes that can take up to 5 minutes. I have tried various settings in the BIOS in order to fix this issue; none have been successful.

Overall, however, the upgrade has been about as problem-free as can be expected - in the case of the Savrow Katana and the desktop computer, there is a definite roughness around the edges; in the case of the HP Compaq nx7000, it’s been an enhancement. Life with Edgy is nearly as sweet as it was with Dapper; depending on the machine, it’s even sweeter.

It’s very rare that a change on American television news is reported in Britain. However a move by CBS News has been widely noted here; they replaced an old male newsreader with a perky, female one named Katie Couric.

This should mean virtually nothing to viewers in the United Kingdom. To be fair, we do get CBS News’ evening broadcast but anyone who goes to bed at a sensible time would never know it: it runs on Sky News at 12:30 AM.

My girlfriend arrived late this past Friday due to a flight delay, so we had the rare opportunity to watch the programme while we were settling down for the evening. I had to explain to her who the perky American woman was; I also had difficulty communicating that somehow her taking over the role was considered important.

The programme is less than 30 minutes long and in terms of providing “news”, it seems rather poor compared to the channels we get in Britain. The use of emotive terms in items which should have been merely describing facts was notable; furthermore, there was a certain maudlin quality about some of the segments, including the item in which a reporter visited the town where United Flight 93 crashed on September 11, 2001. If anything, it was a “news digest” with an editorial slant.

So why the fuss? Why has even the ancient and venerable Economist run an item on something of such minor importance? Apparently, it’s because this is the best counterblast the Old Media can summon up against the New Media.

Ms. Couric’s predecessor, Dan Rather, was felled by the New Media. His credibility was destroyed after a blogger noticed that memos that stated that President Bush had not honourably served in the Texas National Guard were fakes; Mr. Rather, however, had assured everyone they were genuine. The management of CBS somehow think that a lot of hype, perky Katie and yes, a bit of work on their website is going to help.

The programme, as previously noted, is something of a flop as a journal of record. The website is a bit better; it’s a standard site, running off of Linux and Apache, and like many news sites, it has videos to accompany its articles. The videos, however, again have the emotive rather than factual slant which appears to be the big problem with the entire news division.

In addition to standard news, there is a blog for Ms. Couric. Presumably this is an attempt to ensure that CBS can fight blog with blog. That said, it’s not always clear if Ms. Couric writes the items or her staff do. Every blog has a “voice”, and her blog appears to be a cacophony. Overall, most of it is fairly bland; what I found amusing were the “Word of the Day” items. I am surprised that she believes people don’t know the meaning of “Nonplussed” and “Ubiquitous”.

Overall, I have to wonder if this is the best that CBS can do. Is this what they were getting the overseas press worked up about? If they really believe that this is going to break ground online and on television, they are sorely mistaken. As television, it has none of the grandeur or eloquence of say, Sir Trevor McDonald. As an online offering, it is not nearly as exciting as what is happening in the world of blogging. Ms. Couric may not be entirely unpleasant on the eyes, but it takes more than perk to gain and retain viewers. At best, I suggest that CBS may have slowed the bleeding, but there’s nothing about Katie that means the bleeding is going to stop.

When I first tried Firefox on Linux, I thought to myself “Things simply don’t get better than this”. I had never used a quicker browser; it seemed to be making the most of my broadband connection. Never before had the internet seemed so accessible.

I then learned about some tweaks one can apply to Firefox. After making these modifications, again, I thought, “Well, it couldn’t get better than this!” I have been very happy with its performance and wondered how it could be improved further still. Given how fast it was, it seemed unlikely.

Happily, this has come to pass. An optimised build of Firefox for Linux, called appropriately enough, Swiftfox, is by far the fastest and best browser I’ve ever used.

For Ubuntu users, installation is painless. Simply one has to go to www.getswiftfox.com, and click on the link to get the Ubuntu distribution. The package works well with Ubuntu Dapper Drake’s GDebi package management system and installs perfectly.

However, a slight bit of tweaking is required to make it available to the menu system. First, go to Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal. Then type in the following.

cd /usr/lib/swiftfox/icons

This will take you to a directory with all the Swiftfox icons you’d care to use. In my case, I chose to use the 128 x 128 pixel icon, which is entitled mozicon128.png. I tend to like to keep all my menu icons in one directory, namely, /usr/share/pixmaps. In order to get the Swiftfox of my choice into that directory, I typed

sudo cp mozicon128.png /usr/share/pixmaps

Type in your root password when asked, and then the icon will be copied into the appropriate directory.

One can keep using both Swiftfox and Firefox; the only problem is that every time one engages either programme after using the other, it acts like it is a “first time” launch. In my case, I chose to simply replace any launcher for Firefox with a launcher for Swiftfox. In order to do so on the main menu in Ubuntu, right click on “Applications” and select, “Edit Menus”. The Alacarte Menu Editor will appear. Select “Internet” on the left hand side of the panel. Then right click on the Firefox icon on the right hand side of the panel, and select properties. Click on the Firefox icon, navigate to /usr/share/pixmaps, to find the Swiftfox icons. All instances of “firefox”, whether in the title or in the Command should be replaced with “swiftfox”. Once done, click “Close”.

All that said, it is possible to make Swiftfox even faster. Start it up, and enter in “about:config” as a web address. Scroll down to a value entitled network.http.pipelining.requests. Right click on that and choose “Modify”. Swiftfox sets this value at 8; with a good broadband connection, one can push it to 30 without any problems.

Once this value is set, then right click anywhere on the screen and choose New and then Integer. Enter the new value’s name, which is nglayout.initialpaint.delay, and set it to “0″.

With Swiftfox and these small tweaks, I’ve had a browser which is definitely the best web browsing experience to date. In fact, I can only think of one fault with it. Really, the developers have done such a bang up job making it so that Linux users get the most out of the web, surely they should do it also for the users of BSD.

For those who truly want to get away from it all, there are few cities in Western Europe more tenuously linked to the rest of the world than Kassel, Germany. It’s so remote and obscure that it never would have occurred to me go there had it not been for the fact that’s where my girlfriend presently lives. What she told me about it didn’t precisely recommend it, however. She told me it has a reputation as being the “most East German city in Western Germany”. I visited East Berlin just after the Wall fell; it was obvious as soon as I crossed the border that public works people were trying to repair a problem with the city sewer. Perhaps it was a statement on Communism: a country that was short on food was full of excrement.

Kassel’s resemblance to East Germany, fortunately, comes from its proliferation of large avenues, squares and “shoebox” buildings. It also has a distinctly “red” feel, with large streets named after Friedrich Ebert (one of the founding fathers of the Social Democrat Party), Willy Brandt (a Social Democrat Prime Minister, who left office under a cloud as his administration was infiltrated by East German spies) and Dag Hammerskold (one of the first Secretary Generals of the United Nations). That said, it has the benefit of fresh air, a couple of good local beers, some spectacular hills surrounding the town, and the wonderful Orchid Garden restaurant, which serves excellent Thai food. My one regret is not having had the opportunity to go to Kassel’s famous Museum of Death, which sounded like a lot of fun. Still, it was a good holiday with the woman I love, and indeed, a huge break from the norm.

Waiting in Frankfurt Airport to go back was an extremely boring business: the plane was delayed. Rather than waste the time, I decided to get on the internet at the airport, peruse the newspapers and magazines, and see if I could get a quick idea on the state of Linux in Germany.

Germany and Linux are definitely intertwined. After all, one of the most popular distributions, SUSE, has its origins in Germany. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Linux use in Germany may be a bit more prevalent than in other countries; certainly their Linux community is lively. For example, one of the most clever wallpapers I’ve ever seen was a “Linux für Deutschland” image of the Brandenberg Gate: instead of a figure of a chariot drawn by four horses, some clever artist had substituted Tux for the animals.

While an airport survey was unlikely to yield much in the way of solid data, one can get an impression. I thought, “if I walk into the newsagent, how many Linux magazines will I see? What kind of content will those magazines have?” Fortunately, I do read and speak German (which my German work colleagues find odd; English speakers are notoriously non-multilingual in their eyes) so I could get a good idea as to the what the press was saying.

There were two Linux magazines in the airport newsagent. This is actually good, because the newsagent at Frankfurt airport did not have a huge selection for those interested in technology. I chose the PC Welt Linux magazine, which is apparently published 4 times a year.

The magazine is pure Linux evangelism: it came with a DVD that had 9 different distributions of Linux, ranging from Ubuntu to Damn Small Linux. It also came with reviews and guides for Ubuntu and Suse. It also provided a good list of graphics software, and a list of helpful websites. Admittedly, while I’m not a regular reader of techology magazines, I do not believe I’ve seen a more effective presentation of Linux and its benefits in any language.

After perusing the magazine, I wandered down to the internet kiosk to get a further idea of how deeply Linux had penetrated the German market. Some quick research brought up some notable finds. An article written in 2004 stated that German life insurance company LVM was running a pilot programme with Red Hat Linux on the desktop; the city government of Munich opted for 14,000 Linux desktop computers. That said, there is no evidence at first glance to indicate that there is greater uptake of Linux on the desktop in Germany than elsewhere, but at the same time there is no reason to believe that Germany is lagging behind. Rather, Germany appears to be one of the leading Linux nations.

This makes sense; Germany’s biggest virtue has always been precision engineering. Other countries go for having good wine or good living, but to each their own. The German emphasis on reliability and quality makes their country a very poor fit for Windows. Additionally, the Germans have a disdain for paying too much for anything; the profilieration of bargain stores like Lidl is indicative of this trend. Furthermore, their obvious preference for home-grown solutions suggests to me that with a bit more advocacy and marketing, SUSE could be in a position for significant liftoff in the German market. “Erfolg durch Stoltz” (Achievement through Pride) could mean Germany gives us a clue to how a post-Windows future could develop and what it will look like. Or not, they could remain in the Windows ghetto with the rest of us; however, for now, it continues to bear watching.

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.

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.