Oh snap! In the middle of a rant yesterday I suddenly lost my internet connection. And considering what I've been writing about lately, it was more than a little bit spooky. As it turns out, it was simply my ISP recycling the IP addresses and resetting, but it was worrisome initially.
The mighty truly have fallen; Microsoft forlornly begging people to buy Vista this year, promising virtualization then reneging in short order--how much bad press can they take before their stock starts to crater? Pretty soon there will be calls to divest--particularly since they seem to want to get involved in e-voting.
Meanwhile, the news for Linux and open source just gets better every day: free ubuntu books; rave reviews in the press for Ubuntu, Edubuntu, and even a trade union activist blogger got in on the action, connecting the dots why open source is good for trade unions, economically, security-wise, and legally.
On another open source front, the very nice PC-BSD has been released; I saw the review on Distrowatch, went to download it, and as I was installing it, saw that it had made the front page of Slashdot. Again, pretty weird.
I had gone on and on in a prior diary how easy Fedora 7 was to install and setup; not only is it easy, but it's graphically quite pleasing as well. PC-BSD is a close rival for easy and colorful installs; although it did take a bit longer than Fedora 7 (about 15 minutes), nothing comes close to it in the documentation provided in the quick start guide. Loads of very informative pictures, showing exactly how to get everything going in the install, and then once you are in the desktop how to secure your system and install all the extra things you might want.
PC-BSD is FreeBSD with a nifty gui setup device and a KDE desktop (fluxbox and a couple others are also installed by default) environment, and as it is a Unix-like system (i.e., based very closely on Unix) it is open source, licensed under the GPL, or General Public License and thus not allowed to include proprietary software, codecs and so on in the initial install, largely due to legal concerns (intellectual property and/or software patent infringement).
One of the biggest gripes about Linux and other open source systems is that they are not able to play all media formats out of the box; some, such as DreamLinux, LinuxMint, and MEPIS include them, the legal hounds be damned; others, such as Fedora 7, Ubuntu (and variants), Debian, Mandriva, and OpenSuse have firewalls that separate the installations, but still have easy installers or software repositories that can be added with great ease to round out those media player needs. How well a Linux distribution (also called distro) can meet those needs greatly affects its popularity.
So naturally my biggest concern after having installed PC-BSD was how that was going to go; I was relieved just to get a desktop environment, as I had previously tried to install FreeBSD 6.2 a few days prior, and failed miserably. Very good news on that front--in order to get any package, you simply go to the pbi directory (a website) and download the files that you want; so, for instance, if you want to get a full-fledged media player, then you click on the link marked 'Multimedia', and are taken to the directory of all those players.
The truly significant difference from Linux and other open source systems in this is that you are not downloading front ends to particular players, but installers, much as you would in Windows and Mac OS X, with exe and dmg files, respectively. You download the installer, Amarok.pbi (a music player) to your computer, double-click on it, and it's installed, placing icons where you direct it, on the desktop, or in the start menu.
I tried this out, downloading Amarok, KMplayer (a movie player), VLC (another movie player), Xine (a multimedia player), and XMMS (a music player), and then put in a DVD (legally purchased from a licensed retailer) and a music CD (ditto). The DVD played flawlessly, somewhat surprising on this seven-year-old laptop, and the music CD did as well. For someone coming over from the Windows or OS X environments, there's nothing simpler or more intuitive than this. Very reminiscent of what Linspire is trying to with Ubuntu and others in their Click 'N Run enterprise, though that may change now that they have taken their filthy lucre from Microsoft.
PC-BSD runs on top of FreeBSD 6.1, and uses KDE 3.5.5; when KDE 4 arrives, there will be little to distinguish this from a Mac OS X (pre-Leopard) box, except of course the price. Ultra ease of use and installation, easy way to add software packages, full Unix security and stability, no spyware, adware, viruses or other malware--truly a wonderful combination. Add to the fact that it is totally free (as in price and legal liability), without DRM or other media giant restrictions, and you have a nifty system in hand.
I have yet to play with it much, but initial impressions are that it is quite speedy on an older machine, even with as little as 512M of ram; if KDE feels too sluggish, then you can control-alt-backspace into the login window and try a lighter, speedier window manager, such as fluxbox. Have yet to get Beryl installed on it (Hey, I just got it going a few hours ago!), but will get that 3D transparent cube spinning action going shortly.