PC-BSD v1.4 da Vinci released !

I was pleased to see the brain new website this afternoon and 1.4 released. I'm also very happy to see that the new website is LYNX COMPATIBLE !!!! It works and looks nice in modern browsers like Firefox. Yet it still presents a nice clean page to Lynx users.

I downloaded both CD-ROM's, checked the MD5 Checksums, burned them and got a Quick & Dirty backup of my home directory and config files while I waited.

I think I did some thing like:

tar -czf backups.tgz /boot /etc /root
cd /home
tar -cf - Terry | gzip -9 > /usr/Terry_Home_Backup.tgz 

Basically, I made a gzip'd tarball of my old kernel, drivers, and boot-config (/boot), system configuration (/etc) and roots home directory (/root). Then I tar'd and compressed my home directory with gzip. I also made a tarball afterwards of my vim installation in case there was any custom files in it.


Normally when I want to archive a file in a hurry, I use tar's -z option to archive it (tar, tape archive) and compress it gzip (-z). But since I don't know how if there is even a way to change the gzip/bzip2 compression level with bsd's tar implementation. When I want to store some thing big in a hurry however. I usually make use of a pipe and redirection, namely tar -cf - archives the list of files to the standard output rather then a normal file. Which is in turn piped | into gzip who is instructed to use maximum compression on it's input. And the final data, is redirected > to a file of my choice. Some times I will use bzip2 (higher compression) but I generally favor gzip. As normal, I keep a copy of the backup on this machine and my file server just in case.



My laptop was running PC-BSD v1.4BETA so I was not sure if the upgrade would work correct but it seems to have. The update went smoothly and I was allowed to reselect optional packages from disk 2. I elected for kdeedu, kdesdk, koffice, kdegames, and the FreeBSD source code. All installed fine except for the Source Code !!! My /usr/src is empty, as it was each time I installed 1.4BETA. Oh well, csup will get me newer sources...


Before logging in as my normal user, I had to drop to the console and log in as root in order to change my user accounts log in shell from zsh to one installed (sh, csh, tcsh, bash - I chose sh). Other wise it is impossible to log in from KDM. Of course once I made sure my laptop booted into KDE. I went and installed zsh and changed it back. -- I never change roots shell but I do change mine unless I'm sticky. My OpenBSD server still only uses the default (hacked pd)korn shell it came with.


I found 1.4 Release to be much like the Beta but with a new loading screen. I noted that most of the (many) screen savers were removed and one could now specify the rates of the monitor when asked to set up the Xorg config file. It was also nice to see my rc.conf.local file preserved well enough. Although the onboard Winmodem and Winfi don't work, the ethernet card is now detected by the msk driver as mskc0; I don't know if it works since I use a Atheros based Wifi card now. It was very nice to see MPlayer back in the install. It was removed from 1.4BETA along with the GTK GUI, in 1.4 Release we have MPlayer and the KMPlayer front end. Although Flash7 seems to have been lost now. Oh well, I'd rather skip compling MPlayer then use Flash ^_^


Since the upgrade process basically nukes all installed software. I had to reinstall most every thing I've added. Since I've stopped using PBI, that has made this take a little lower. I tend to use ports and a few packages.

My hit list

 codecs   # Hand installed from MPlayerHQ
 cscope   # code browser, I've been meaning to learn how to use it.
 elinks   # Web Browser, text/gui
 exuberant ctags  # What I use to generate my system tags file in ~/.vim/tags
 gmake   # Needed for GTK/QT development and building Vim with GTK support
 konversation   # The worlds greatest IRC Client
 kscope   # GUI front end for cscope, might be worth toying with.
 lynx-current   # Web brower, text; If it supported decent html layout it'd be my default.
 mg   # Micro GNU Emacs based editor maintained by OpenBSD people.
 portaudit   # Was in 1.3 but removed in PC-BSD v1.4
 portupgrade   # Was in 1.3 but removed in PC-BSD 
 prboom and files   # Doom I/II updated to *RUN* on modern hardware.
 psearch   # port searching, I wonder why no one wrote a GUI for this dandy script.
 rtags   # CTags like program for Ruby written in Ruby file, works with vi/emacs
 ruby-doc-stdlib   # Docs of Rubies standard library
 ruby-gems   # Ruby package manager for extra Ruby code
 ruby-usersguide   # Duh
 rubygem-rake   # make done Ruby style
 scheme48   # Scheme, a Lisp like language.
 supertux   # Hey Super Mario, ehhh Super Tux !
 vim   # Compiled from source as per my norm
 xemacs   # Last time I used GNU Emacs, now I'll return to my old emacsen (I prefer Vim)
 xpdf   # Useful tool

I also need to install a decent web browser (gui) and JRE/JDK. I might bite it and use PBI's for the JRE/JDK but not for any thing else. I've found Firefox 3.0 Alpha and Netscape 9 to slow for my tastes (my laptop is only a sempron-m 3300+ and 512mb ddr). Konqueror I've found tends to lock up on some websites, maybe it's the Javascript engine I can't really tell.


Ether way, I need to find a decent browser I can *live* with that works on most OSes I'm likely to use. Or one that uses the same bookmark format as Konqueror any way xD. Lynx is still the best browser I've ever used though, even if it lays out web pages in Text Only and crappy.



My laptop is basically my workstation. So it has a lot of stuff in it, paramount in it is my current home directory. Most important being ~/{Documents,Pictures,Music,.vim,vimrc} and

Terry@Dixie$ /bin/ls -1 ~/Programming                                      6:53
Ada
Assembly
C
C++
GTK
HTML
Java
NCURSES
PHP
Perl
Python
QT
Ruby
Scheme
Shell
Style
templets

I should probably restructure that directory, make it neater.


Future todos, clean my home directory up again.

reorganise files.

clean up my bookmarks file in prep for a new browser.

Make new XMMS and Blackbox PBI's.

Pass out... Work in 6 hours...