I wanted to install unix on Jamie’s new laptop for him. It is a wireless enabled notebook from Novatech with an AMD x64 processor.

I kept notes as I went along, unfortunately the windows box I was putting the notes on restarted, so the following is from memory.

The distros I tried were as follows:-

• freebsd 7.2 and 8 RC2,
• opensolaris 09 06
• centos 5.4,
• debian 5.03
• fedora 11
• gentoo 20091029
• knopix v6
• openSUSE 11.2 RC2
• PC-BSD 7.1.1
• Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10

The quick summary is that only a few of the distro’s installed at all, and almost all were unable to deal with the network card.  This is because the card driver is only available in the linux 9.   There is some info on the hardware and a how to at http://forum.novatech.co.uk/showthread.php?t=15068, but if it is your only machine you need to get networking set up before you can browse and find things.

The really bad

• Centos – install crashed can not remember why now
• Fedora – install crashed can not remember why now
• PC-BSD – install got to the point after configuring disks and the could not mount the CD, that it had used to boot off

Installed, but did not have network card driver

• Freebsd 7.2 – I was able to get an IP address that I could ping from another machine so probably me, could not get dhcp to work or to get it to look out at the world to download files
• opensolaris
• debian
• gentoo
• knopix
• openSUSE
• Ubuntu 9.04

Fully worked from install

• Free BSD 8 RC2
• Ubuntu 9.10

So the quick review of the various distros, starting with what worked and going downwards.

Working Distros

Ubuntu 9.10

This is definitely the easiest to install and use and just worked straight off, with a quick painless install.  There was a quick download of the wireless drive and make; make install, reboot and both wired and wireless networking were working perfectly.

This is what Jamie’s laptop is using.

Free BSD 8 RC2

Personally, I like the ugly text based BSD installs, because they work.  However they are a very long way behind Ubuntu if you are not a complete techi.

FreeBSD installed fine, DHCP worked with the wired network, and I was able to install everything from ports, apart from Open Office, which I downloaded.

Issues

• I love ports, but compiling and installing X11, Gnome2, etc takes a long time.
• Open office installed fine using the compiled version
• Java is a real pain – because of sun licencing

Java on Free BSD

I installed wget, because the Gnome2 browser was a bit iffy about where it tried to save files.  Which was a problem for the various things that wanted me to accept licence terms around “very evil SUN” java.  I had to download somethings onto the windows box and scp them over.

I also needed to edit the make files and filelist since things had changed since the port was created, and I was not able to find the tzupdate file that was in the port.

By this time I had found the Novatech howto for the wireless side of things, and decided that Ubuntu would be much, much easier for Jamie.

Did not Support network card

Free bsd 7.2, Gentoo, Debian

Card was required to work for rest of install so did not get much further, all fairly similar text based working installers

Knopix, Open Suse, Ubuntu 9.04

Nice graphical working installers, and OS installed fine.  Just did not have network support built into kernal.

OpenSolaris

First time I have tried openSolaris, and it was really good.  It has a nice set of hardware diagnostics, that worked.  Unfortunately it did not support the hardware, and I did not try compiling the drivers.

Network Manager issues

Goes mad if network card not supported same issue across all linux distros that did not support the card in the kernel.

Summary

Ubuntu, has a more up to date kernel at the point when the laptop was updated, and this made it the only distro to install out of the box.  Free BSD also had kernal support for the system, however there was significantly more work to make it work and it was not appropriate as a starting form of Unix.

DesktopBSD é um sistema operacional pré-configurado para os usuários usufruirem de uma plataforma poderosa e segura que é fácil de instalar, configurar e utilizar a partir do momento da inserção do CD de instalação. Baseado na última versão do FreeBSD, juntamente com o famoso KDE, e uma incrível quantidade de ferramentas gráficas especialmente desenvolvidas. DesktopBSD visa ser um sistema operacional estável e poderoso.

A base de qualquer sistema BSD é o kernel e ferramentas que são projetadas para trabalharem juntas sem problemas. É apoiada por um grupo de engenheiros que trabalham em conjunto para desenvolver e manter as ferramentas associadas. Esta fundação dá suporte a uma comunidade de desenvolvedores que trabalham  para criar e apoiar mais de 14.000 pacotes adicionais, que pode ser baixado gratuitamente e instalado em seu computador. DesktopBSD é baseado em FreeBSD, todos esses pacotes estão disponíveis para  você também.

Um equívoco comum sobre o DesktopBSD é que ele é uma distribuição desktop baseada no BSD rival do PC-BSD, por serem similares em estrutura e objetivos. Entretanto, o projeto DesktopBSD foi iniciado aproximadamente um ano antes do projeto PC-BSD, apesar do fato de a primeira versão do PC-BSD sair antes da versão do DesktopBSD. Nem o DesktopBSD nem o projeto PC-BSD tem intenção de serem rivais, sendo projetos completamente independentes com características díspares e atitudes muito diferentes. DesktopBSD tem uma versão 64 bits desde a versão 1.0.

Características

• Instalador gráfico que permite particionamento de discos e criação de usuários
• Ferramenta gráfica que permite administrar, instalar e atualizar os programas usando o sistema de ports do FreeBSD
• Gerenciador gráfico de interfaces de rede e montagem/desmontagem de drives

RELEASE 1.7

. Live-DVD para testá-lo antes de instalá-lo

. Com base no versão 7.2  estável e segura do FreeBSD

. KDE 3.5.10 um ambiente gráfico maduro e fácil de usar

. OpenOffice 3.1.1 como suíte de escritório

. Java SE 6 pré-instalado

. O servidor gráfico X.Org 7.4

. Um grande número de melhorias e correções

. Suporte para o GRUB e uma ferramenta de configuração gráfica

No dia 7 de setembro de 2009 foi disponibilizado a versão 1.7 do DesktopBSD no site do projeto.

Distribution: PC-BSD
PC-BSD Version: 7.1.1
Desktop: K Desktop Environment (KDE)
KDE Version: 4.2.4

PC-BSD မွာ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီဖြန္႔ install လုပ္ဖူးသူရွိပါသလား? PC-BSD က KDE desktop environment ကိုသံုးၿပီး FreeBSD base system ဆိုေတာ႔ Linux နဲ႔ေတာ႔ သိပ္ၿပီး အရမ္းကိုကြာျခားမႈေတာ႔ မရွိပါဘူး၊ သိပ္ၿပီး ကြဲျပားျခားနားမႈမရွိေပမယ္႔ တကယ္ေတာ႔ system ခ်င္းက တျခားစီပါပဲ။ Linux အတြက္ zawgyi keyboard packages ေတြအလြယ္ေတြရေနၿပီးျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း PC-BSD အတြက္ မရွိေသးဘူးထင္ပါတယ္။

ေဇာ္ဂ်ီဖြန္႔ကို သြင္းဖို႔အတြက္ စရေအာင္..

Applications Launcher (Start Menu နဲ႔တူတူပါပဲ) ကိုသြားၿပီး Applications > System > System Settings ကိုဖြင္႔ပါ။ ဒီေနရာမွာ Administration Tasks ေတြလုပ္ေဆာင္ဖို႔အတြက္ root password ကိုေတာင္းခံပါမယ္.. ထည့္သြင္းေပးလိုက္ပါ။ System Settings Window ႀကီးပြင္႔လာမယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ General နဲ႔ Advanced ဆိုၿပီး Tabs ႏွစ္ခုထဲက General Tab မွာ Computer Adminstration Category ေအာက္က Font Installer ကို Double Click ႏွိပ္ေပးပါ။ Font Installer Window ပြင္႔လာပါမယ္။ အဲဒီခါက်ရင္ Add button ကိုႏွိပ္ၿပီး ေဇာ္ဂ်ီဖြန္႔သိမ္းထားရာ Folder ကို browse လုပ္ၿပီး ေရြးယူ install လုပ္ပါ။ ေအာက္က ပံုေတြကိုၾကည့္ပါ။

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

ၿပီးရင္ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီကီးဘုတ္ကို သြင္းရေအာင္ Applications Launcher > Applications > System > Terminal ကိုဖြင္႔ပါ။ ၿပီးရင္ ေအာက္က command line နဲ႔ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီ xkeybaord symbol ကိုသြင္းပါ။

% su
# cp mm /usr/X11R6/share/X11/xkb/symbols

ဒီအဆင္႔ၿပီးရင္ေတာ႔ Keyboard Layout Setting ကိုသြားၿပီး Myanmar Keyboard Layout ကို ထည့္ရပါမယ္။ ေစာေစာက က်ေနာ္တို႔ဖြင္႔ခဲ႔တဲ႔ System Settings Window မွာ General Tab မွာပဲ Personal Category ေအာက္က Regional & Language ကို Double Click ႏွိပ္ၿပီး ဖြင္႔ပါ။ Regional & Language Window ေပၚလာတဲ႔အခါ လက္၀ဲဘက္မွာရွိတဲ႔ Keyboard Layout Tab ကိုသြားပါ။ အဲဒီမွာ လက္ယာဘက္မွာရွိတဲ႔ Keyboard Layout Dialog Window ထဲက Layout Tab မွာ Enable Keyboard Layouts option box ေလးကို check လုပ္ေပးပါ။ အဲလို enable လုပ္ေပးလိုက္ရင္ ေအာက္က ႏိုင္ငံအလိုက္ Keyboard Layouts ေတြ available ျဖစ္လာပါတယ္၊ အဲဒီ List box ထဲမွာ Myanmar ကိုေရြးၿပီး အေပၚနားမွာရွိတဲ႔ right arrow ေလးကိုႏွိပ္ေပးၿပီး ညာဘက္ Active Layouts box ေလးထဲေရာက္လာေအာင္ ပို႔လိုက္ပါ။ ၿပီးရင္ Keyboard Layout Switching နဲ႔ Third Level Keys တို႔အတြက္ လက္ရွိ Layout Tab ကေန Advanced Tab ကိုသြားပါ။ အဲဒီထဲမွာ xkb options box ထဲက Key(s) to change layout က Layout Switching အတြက္ျဖစ္ၿပီး Key to choose 3rd level က 3rd level key change ဖို႔အတြက္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီေနရာမွာ အသံုးျပဳသူဆႏၵအေလွ်ာက္ options ေတြကို ထားႏိုင္ပါတယ္။

Picture 7

Keyboard Layouts

xkb options

အဲဒါဆိုရင္ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီဖြန္႔ကို ျမင္ႏိုင္ဖတ္ႏိုင္ၿပီး ပံုမွန္အတိုင္း အျခား Linux တို႕ Windows တို႔မွာလို စာရိုက္ႏိုင္ပါၿပီ။

အကယ္လို႔ Firefox မွာ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီဖြန္႔ မျမင္ရပါက ေအာက္က command lines နဲ႔ zawgyi font ကိုထပ္သြင္းေပးပါ..

% su
# cp ZawgyiOne20080210.ttf ~/.fonts
# fc-cache

ၿပီးရင္ firefox browser ကို restart လုပ္ေပးပါက ပံုမွန္အတိုင္း ေဇာ္ဂ်ီဖြန္႔နဲ႔ ဖတ္လို႔ေရးလို႔ရပါၿပီ။

အကယ္လို႔ OpenOffice မွာ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီဖြန္႔ေျပာင္းလို႔မရေသးပါက ေအာက္က command line နဲ႔ zawgyi font ကိုထပ္သြင္းေပးပါ..

# cp ZawgyiOne20080210.ttf /Programs/OpenOffice3.1.0_1/openoffice.org-3.1.0/openoffice.org/basis3.1/share/fonts/truetype

ဒါပါပဲ!
Enjoy it!!

O Phoronix, site voltado à testes de hardware e software em sistemas opensource (especialmente Linux), realizou um benchmark com sua ferramenta de benchmark (pacote deb disponível no site. Estará nos repositórios do novo Jaunty), entre a mais nova versão do Kubuntu e o PC-BSD, ambos utilizando o KDE 4. Confira aqui os resultados, mas já vou adiantar que o PC-BSD terminou massacrado no teste…

این مقاله جالب مقایسه ای بین نسخه ی نهایی PC-BSD 7.1 و نسخه ی آزمایشی Kubuntu 9.04 ( با دسکتاپ KDE 4.2.2 ) از لحاظ سرعت و بازدهی انجام داده که در نهایت ۱۴ تست از مجموع ۱۶ تست انجام شده با برتری Kubuntu 9.04 به پایان رسیده و تنها ۲ تست به سود PC-BSD 7.1 بوده است.

PC-BSD 7.1 از خانواده ی BSD و مبتنی بر FreeBSD 7.1 با دسکتاپ KDE 4.2.2 میباشد.

PC-BSD

Kris Moore ha annunciato il rilascio di PC-BSD 7.1 Galileo Edition, un sistema operativo desktop basato su FreeBSD 7.1 ke include le versioni aggiornate di KDE (4.2.2) e X.Org (7.4). L’ultima versione di KDE include nuovi effetti alle windows, screen savers e migliorie all’accelerazione 3D. PC-BSD 7.1 ha anke molti importanti miglioramenti e bug fixes ke rendono molto + facile il suo utilizzo: il nuovo KDE 4 permette agli utenti di aggiungere facilmente e gestire stampanti e processi di stampa; lo strumento Aggiungi/Rimuovi Programmi e l’Update Manager sono stati consolidati in Software & Aggiornamenti; l’Updater Tray è stato modificato in una piccola utility; inoltre ora è possibile effettuare ports e packages di FreeBSD usando il comando runports e tante altre novità ke possono essere lette in dettaglio nell’annuncio stampa, nelle note tecnike e nel changelog. Download (MD5): PCBSD7.1-x86-DVD.iso (1,858MB, MD5, torrent), PCBSD7.1-x64-DVD.iso (1,891MB, MD5, torrent).

You’re looking for a friendly all-in-the-box FreeBSD distro ? Give PC-BSD a try ! It’s KDE4 powered (Compiz within), got self-installing software packages system (with no dependencies problems, every software is packed with all the librairies needed), linux emulation support , a really active community and a very beautiful and easy-to-use graphical installer…

   PC-BSD-ul se indreapta cu pasi mici catre versiunea finala, dovada si actualul release candidate care vine cu urmatorul changelog :

* Fixed bugs with nvidia driver replacing libwfb incorrectly – 3620
* Fixed bug finding version number when doing update from 7.1 -> 7.1 – 3599
* Added tests for partition / slice space requirements during install – 3637
* Added pykde4 and KDE 4 printing utilities
* Fixed flash9 plugin on amd64 – 3654
* Updated runports command to accept arguments for running apps in /usr/local – 3629
* Fixed several tools to use UTF-8 when reading file data, fixing localization issues – 3635
* Fixed CUPS ppd search paths, which improves number of available printing drivers.

   N-am mai scris demult despre un BSD si iata ca azi am ocazia odata cu noul beta de la PC-BSD care trece la KDE 4.2.1 . Changelogul este urmatorul :

* Updated KDE to 4.2.1
* Updated Xorg to 7.4
* Updated NVIDIA driver to 180.35
* Updated FreeBSD to 7.1-Stable
* Implemented new desktop schematic, PC-BSD ports are now installed in /PCBSD/local
* Added support for installing and running FreeBSD ports, without effecting the desktop
* Re-implemented the "Upgrade" functionality from previous PC-BSD releases, now preserves the home data, along with /usr/local ports.
* Added gtklp, a GUI front-end to ‘lpr’, which allows setting options from programs which use lpr for printing.
* Incorporated "Online Updates" into the "Software and Updates Manager", and re-wrote the tray application to be a notifer only
* Added menu icons for "runports", which allows building + running applications in the FreeBSD ports tree
* Added detection for vmware installs, and set kern.hz to provide a speedup and prevent clock drift
* Set hern.hz on normal systems to 100, which seems to provide a noticeable speed increase
* Fixed a bug in the update notifier tray, now re-scans for PBI updates after a PBI is installed, removed, or updated
* Fixed bugs loading i18n data during install, causing incorrect characters to appear
* Use ‘noatime’ file mount option during install, speeds up FS .

El driver nv que viene por defecto con la instalación de PC-BSD 7.0.2 amd no funciona para las nvidia integradas 7050.
Si tienen una nvidia solo podrán usar vesa.

Kris Moore ha annunciato il rilascio di PC-BSD 7.0.2, il secondo aggiornamento di correzioni e modifike del sistema operativo basato su FreeBSD 7 ke rende il desktop simile a quello di Windows. Alcune di queste modifiche sono le seguenti: KDE 4.1.3, miglioramento delle prestazioni del desktop con schede nVidia; migliorato supporto NTFS in scrittura; correzioni e miglioramenti ad  HAL, correzioni di bug di installazione. Questa versione di PC-BSD può essere scaricata e installata come una nuova installazione o, in alternativa, può essere aggiornato PC-BSD 7.0.1 attraverso lo strumento System Update o tramite PBI. Leggere l’annuncio del rilascio e il changelog per ulteriori dettagli. Download (MD5) il DVD di installazione da qui: PCBSD7.0.2-x86-DVD.iso (1622MB), PCBSD7.0.2-x64-DVD.iso (1647MB).

   Un  nou release de la PC-BSD care updateaza KDE-ul la versiunea 4.1.3 si repara o seama de bug-uri mai mici sau mai mari. De asemenea imbunatateste scrierea pe partitiile NTFS . Alte detalii in post-ul anteriror .