Category: Other Operating System

Other operating system discussion, BSD, Windows, MacOS, etc

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Microsoft teaches parent to be l33t!

I found this article while surfing Microsoft website about child safety when using the internet. This particular article is trying to educate parents with the slang involved in the internet.

words like l33t, h4x0r, j00,pr0n are explained in the articles as well as guidelines to understand such words when parents came accross them. This articles also may serve as a reference to people who wants to learn l33t5p33k.

Link to the article : A parent’s primer to computer slang

<M$> w00t, j00 4r3 0wn3d !!

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Freesbie – BSD on LiveCD!

Yesterday I got around my free time to try out Freesbie, a BSD LiveCD based on FreeBSD.
Freesbie

The LiveCD is nice, as it boot on several of my pc without any problem. Upon booting, you’ll be presented with the typical FreeBSD boot screen. After that a screen will prompt you to your keyboard layout and your locale. The last screen will prompt you to choose whether you want to boot into console (tcsh), fluxbox or Xfce (GUI mode).

Upon entering Xfce window manager I could connect to internet instantly using DHCP, but as a challange, I tried to connect the internet through manual dialing using dial-up modem and adsl modem, both works perfectly!

Freesbie screenshot

Freesbie also took the initiatives to mount all mountable partitions it could find (Linux partition, vfat partitions, UFS partitions) and really ease the job. My USB drive also are detectable and mounted upon insertion (hotplug-style). Making everyday work a breeze.

The thing that I’m not fond of Freesbie is, the default user of the system is “root”. Well, that makes me a bit nervous when working with freesbie, because user apps is running as superuser priviledges.

FreeBSD includes movie player and xmms player, but unfortunately i cant enjoy any of it because the freesbie developer neglect to include my soundcard module “fm-801” inside the cd. So if your soundcard is not listed in the screenshot below, then you will have a mute freesbie box :

Freesbie screenshot

I must say that the choice of application included in Freesbie is friendly to home/average user (well since most people tells me BSD is for elite people, which i personally believe untrue), It includes among others, openoffice suite, moz firefox webbrowser, xchat irc client, gaim instant-messenger, thunderbird email client, bittorrent client and many goodies.

Freesbie screenshot

The LiveCD also double as installer cd as you can install a fully working FreeBSD 5.3 in your system. With stable internet connection, you can cvsup it to the current release of FreeBSD.

Overall, Freesbie is an nice LiveCD based on BSD, which offers usability for users who want to try out BSD-based operating system without messing up with their hdd. It’s convenient to use, and newbie friendly too, I hope that I can continue to see a better Freesbie in the future. :)

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Two days till GNOME 2.12 Official Release

It’s going to be another 2 days till GNOME 2.12 is officially release to public. The much anticipated GNOME 2.12 seems to spots a few more enhancement, than it’s previous release :

  1. Smoother edges with Cairo vector graphics library
  2. Drag and drop handling has been improved
  3. Better Integration with HAL, GNOME can display icons for different devices connected to computer
  4. System Tools that can configure your startup services
  5. Totem GStreamer backend now has full support for DVD menu

Please read A Prerelease Tour of GNOME 2.12 for more information.

The GNOME 2.12 official page. Watch this page for GNOME LiveCD.

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Configuring BSD as an average Home-user OS

Yup, you read that right, today i’ve finished configuring my FreeBSD 5.4-Releaseas an average home-user box.

Previously, I had only a minimal FreeBSD 4.6 (includes gcc) inside my pc to test out my apps before releasing to public, and I’ve no intention of using it seriously because I’m so used to GNU utils instead of BSD ones.

I’ve considered doing this as a challenge for myself, I’m getting bored of testing various GNU/Linux distro that i’ve decided to use FreeBSD seriously for a change.

Well, what would i do? Having installed a barebone FreeBSD system made me thinking, what should i do now?. Firstly, I jot down things that i like to do mostly with my pc, work from there.

That kind of thinking narrows down to coding with c, self-taught php-class, movie player (mpeg4,dvd capable), music player (mp3 player), cd-writing, p2p, and of course internet connection.

FreeBSD Xwindows environment setting change a bit from the last time i use it. Seems that now I need to configure xdm manually, which is not my area of expertise, Luckily the FreeBSD Handbook came in handy in these situation, although i had quite a bump at setting up my desired WM.

Next stop, was setting up my internet connection using PPPoE (that’s Streamyx broadband), which again left me clueless. I know that I can connect to the internet quickly by enabling dhcp-client, but hey, that’s not quite fun for me. Luckily, the “/etc/share/examples/” directory have the ppp.conf sample which I merrily configured my internet connection.

After i’ve settled up the internet connection, everything else is a piece of cake. I’ve surf the web for the Freebsd ports collection and install all things that i required there, again I only have minor hiccups here where I had to use “cvsup” to download things that i cant acquire from pkg_add command.

All in all, it was fun experience setting up FreeBSD box for my average home-user need. I cant wait to start using *BSD now for a change. ;)

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When Microsoft write about GNU/Linux-related tutorial

I came across this official article in Microsoft Help and Support Website.

What worth mentioning about this article is, this is the first Microsoft article that explains a little bit about GNU/Linux filesystem accurately and in non-biased way against their own filesystem.

This article also feature short tutorial on how to use the GNU/Linux “fdisk” program, including “fdisk” keys to create, write, and delete partition. The Linux disk/partition terminology such as /dev/sda, /dev/hda1, etc, are also explained in this tutorial. Yeah, something that I never expected from this company, but they did it after all?

Wanna know the catch?

Read the complete article : http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314458

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Longhorn : Microsoft Windows Vista

Rumours floating around the internet that Microsoft is going to release it’s latest operating system product codename “Longhorn” as Windows Vista.

According to the rumours, the “Vista” name would be in line with the vision the company has presented for the operating system, which is due on the market next year, replacing the current Windows XP.

There is still no official announcement or confirmation from the Official Microsoft Longhorn website about this, but Microsoft has already registered domains to go along with the newly christened Windows, including windowsvista.com. The domains were registered in late March, indicating the company made the decision even before WinHEC gave developers their first taste of Longhorn in over a year.

According to the same source, Microsoft Windows Vista is going to ship out somewhere around the end of the next year (2006)

Update :
Microsoft release official announcement today 22 July 2005 (Pacific Time) about Microsoft Windows Vista, thanks to bro Hafidz for pointing me.

p/s: If this is true then, you might see your windows boot logo as Microsoft Windows Bueno Vista Kolumbia Tri-star. lol.

Source :
1.BetaNews
2.SeattlePi.com
3.Slashdot.org