FreeSBIE — the FreeBSD-based live CD

I returned to FreeSBIE today. I haven’t reviewed it so well in the past because it’s a bit kludgy. But now that I have many more months of Linux (and X Window System) experience I can approach FreeSBIE and at least get it running.

I forgot that by default, FreeSBIE boots to a shell, not the gui.

To start X, just type this at he prompt:

startx

Or … you can use the following cheat codes BEFORE booting into FreeSBIE:

freesbie.xfce4
freesbie.flux

… and you will boot into one of those two window managers. Ideally, FreeSBIE should automatically boot into a GUI, with a shell being an option, and at the very least there should be a message on the screen telling the user to type “startx” to get the window manager going. I say this because the “documentation” with FreeSBIE consists of an HTML document that comes up automatically … only after you are in X.

Since I don’t use a dynamic IP at this location, I had to set up my own static IP. Usually there’s a GUI or script to help you out. Even Slackware has such a script.

Not FreeSBIE. I had to do it at the command line. It was just that little bit different from Linux, given the difference between BSD and Linux. But it wasn’t above my skill level:

My Ethernet interface, usually eth0 in Linux, is called fxp0 in FreeSBIE/FreeBSD.
(My comments are in italic and parenthesis — do NOT type them in. Bold is for emphasis.)

I opened a terminal:

$ su
(No root password necessary in FreeSBIE; I get the # prompt immediately.)

# ifconfig fxp0 10.10.10.8 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.10.10.255
(Use your own static IP info on the numbers above in bold.)

# route add default 10.10.10.1
(Note: don’t use route add default gw, like in Linux — gw is not needed. As above, enter your own router/gateway address)

I also set up my name servers in /etc/resolv.conf (I used vi because I knew it would be there. You can also use nano in FreeSBIE. Use any text editor you wish in its place:

# vi /etc/resolv.conf

once in the file, I added these lines:

nameserver 192.9.200.4
nameserver 192.9.200.2

(as always, add your own search domain and name server IPs, then save and close the file; you should now be ready to start Firefox and begin browsing the Web.)

Anyway, now I was able to use FreeSBIE. It’s pretty fast. Not as fast as Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux, but good enough.

FreeSBIE doesn’t benefit from the same kind of compression as most Linux live CDs, and as such, there are far fewer applications available. But between Firefox, Thunderbird, Vim, nano and AbiWord, there was enough for me to get around.

I had no idea how to do a cron job to get the noisy fan in my Gateway Solo 1450 laptop to turn off, and since running FreeSBIE I’ve struck out in a bunch of Linux distros as well when it comes to managing this fan. I’ve discovered that Debian Etch, Ubuntu (not the latest kernel but the older one in the current 7.10 version) and CentOS 5 (aka Red Hat) all are able to manage this fan automatically.

Thus, if I had a desktop computer that could run FreeBSD, I’d be racing to install it right now and see how it runs.

I’d probably be better off figuring out how to get Puppy’s ACPI fan control working. All the solutions thus far look a little daunting.

Did I mention that the fan is loud? Really loud.

WordPress charges for uploads beyond 50 MB

That’s a way to make money. I don’t anticipate uploading anything beyond JPEGs. So how many images is that? Let’s say the average image is 50 KB. Ten such images would total 500 K, 100 would be 5 MB, and 1,000 would be 50 MB.

But not all images are that big (although some might indeed be bigger). I’ll give some wiggle room and say that you have to hit 1,500 images before you have to start paying ($20 a year, I believe).

It would take a long time to get that many posts and images, so it may indeed be nothing to worry about, especially since I’ve been posting fewer and fewer images on my tech-related posts. But … Blogger doesn’t charge for anything, as far as I know.

Are the built-in stats really worth it? Does Blogger not include built-in stats so it won’t eat into business for Google Analytics?

WordPress vs. Blogger

I’ve only been doing this for a few hours. It’s too early to tell.

One thing that attracted me to WordPress was the built-in statistics. Not that counting up traffic is what this is all about, because it isn’t.

Right out of the box, I’m not super-impressed by the pre-canned blog “themes” in WordPress. I assumed there would be more. I’m sure there’s a way to tweak or overhaul them; I just don’t know how to do it yet.

All my Blogger blogs are so old, I don’t have the “new” templates that supposedly can be changed easily. I never explored that “improvement” in Blogger because a) I haven’t been on Blogger all that much, and b) I know that doing so will wipe out my blogrolls. The latter isn’t so important anymore, as the blogrolls are pretty old and out of date. I just converted one of my Blogger blogs to the “new” template format, and all looks pretty good. As far as Blogger goes, I didn’t see anything new in terms of blog design, and I haven’t looked at templates in more than a year. At least WordPress appears to be coming up with new templates.

The WordPress interface is, in a word, different. I’m used to Blogger (and, sadly, Movable Type), but I’ll keep on going with WordPress and have more to say at a later date.

The WordPress ‘tag surfer’

I had no idea what the “tag surfer” was. I clicked and found out.

What it does is take you to other WordPress blog posts on topics that match your own. It’s a great way, from their standpoint, to get you to link to other WordPress blogs, and it’s equally great for you because … you find stuff that’s good to link to.