Playing with FreeBSD and KDE

I've been playing around with PC-BSD, which is a more-gui friendly version of FreeBSD. I know Linux already so it didn't take much to learn. I'm starting to like it - and KDE is a sweet desktop. The picture to the left is KMail, KDE's mail application. What I like about BSD is the 'ports'. I can install Firefox simply by typing "add_pkg -r firefox" - it goes off and downloads the dependencies and executables and installs it. Too easy. I may switch over some day from Windows, the only thing stopping me is apps I need such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver. OpenOffice suffices for what I do with MS Office.

Techie quote...

"BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC."

2005 Ford Mustang

I haven't driven for years, but when I do I want it to be in this. I've taken a stab at being non-materialistic, but sometimes you need to dream about something you can touch (and burn rubber with :) to get yourself in gear (sorry for the pun!) .

New VMWare is pretty nice

I have put myself on a self teaching course to get my skills up to date, and VMWare is a great tool to experiment with different OSs. I've installed and use Windows 2003 Server evaluation, and plan to install FreeBSD, Linux, and maybe Solaris 10. VMWare is *fast*!. It's not simply a virtual machine, it's a hardware virtualizer. Programs are executed natively inside the vm, and only when a program executes supervisor instructions or accesses the hardware does the VM need to intervene. I love not having to dual boot and partition drives and all that mess.

Language quote...

PHP - it's "training wheels without the bike" -- Randal L. Schwartz

Sta Wars Episode III

The movie overall was not too bad, except for the Frankenstein Vader part. NOOOOOO!! I wouldn't call the acting or the dialog great, but better than the last 2. On another note, General Grievous sounds a lot like Triumph the Insult Dog to me. I kept thinking "When is he going to ask Vader which button calls his parents to come pick him up". :)

Alternatives to Google?

I wanted to see what was out there besides Google for searching the web, so I did some research and wrote a small article about my findings:

Alternatives to Google?

Pass around freely, but please - no Slashdot. :) Also, if you find any grammar oddities, please comment.

5.1 channel streaming music

I guess I haven't kept up to date on audio codecs. aacPlus is a codec that can stream 48k data at 128k mp3 quality. This opens the door to streaming 5 channel audio, cell phones, and who knows what else. Mp3 is pretty old if you think about it.

http://www.codingtechnologies.com/products/aacPlus.htm

List price on Sun enterprise server

Hmm, usually super-high-end servers don't have a list price. This one's only 3.5 mil: :)

Sun Fire E25K Server