Adventures in BSD Land

It is most difficult to see people who have used computers for so long and have not discover the power, or freedom, that UNIX offers. And still, there is no denying in my heart - there is no denying the excitement therein from knowing that these are exciting times.

My System

standard AT desktop case (3-5.25", 2-3.5")
some power supply
Sis 471 mobo (tweaked-out)
AMD or Intel 486 DX2/80@100Mhz (heatsink only)
256 L2 write-back SRAM cache
32 MB 60ns fast page 72-pin simm memory
520 MB Seagate IDE HD, 3800 RPM, 14ms, PIO Mode 2
DTC/Winbond EIDE Multi-IO controller on VLB
3Com 509b combo NIC on ISA
Diamond SpeedStar 64 2 MB video on ISA
Opti 931 sound on ISA
IBM P50 15" Monitor (Trinitron)
Mouse Systems 3-button serial mouse
Zenith AT keyboard (very sturdy)
cheapo amplified speakers

It would be nice to have more cache, a faster hard drive, a 19 inch Trinitron, more memory, SIIG MiniTouch keyboard, yadda, yadda. But, make no mistake about it, I am very happy with this system, which I've named TAZ, after my favorite fictional character, and I'm more than content with its performance. Speaking of performance, TAZ has the floating point performance of a Pentium 75, an xstones rating of 125,000, and I0 over a 50Mhz local bus. Needless to say, I have not ceased to be amazed by the level of performance of this so-called obsolete system. However, I still may replace TAZ one day, as my eBay profits have been burning a hole in my pocket, and the Athlon has been calling out for me. It would also be nice to have an ATX case. But before I get to the applications (what actually makes a given system useful), let me start at a more basic level (read: kernel related).

There are the usual customizations. The neatest ones are file-system related, namely, I have slash tmp on MFS, and I have soft-updates enabled on all my UFS slices slash partitions. If you know of other ways of maximizing file system performance, please let me know (especially DMA stuff). For sound, I'm using the PCM driver, which I've found to have better performance than the older driver.

Daemons used to run. Now not even sshd is left. I used to run both xfs and a xfstt, but I haven't needed the former since I decommisioned my 386 X Terminal, and the latter has a serious bug. Xdm used to wait for me to log in remotely - it doesn't anymore. It's all about valuable CPU time.

My Environment

I use a slightly-customized (not source) pdksh (Korn shell) with vi command-line editing. I do use vi for practically all my text editing.

My primary window manager is fvwm 1.24r which is very customizable and resource-friendly. I've also spent some time in blackbox and icewm as well as olvwm. I haven't really used icewm lately since I've been using 8-bit color - I do miss the Absolute_I theme, though. 1024x768@70Hz is my usual resolution and refresh rate (100dpi fonts).

My terminal emulator of choice is rxvt 2.6.1. I tried to use Eterm, but TAZ said, No. It's easy to forget how much time I spent looking for the perfect (or adequate) terminal emulator under Windows. Rxvt is definitely something easily taken for granted.

Unfortunately, there isn't much of a choice in [graphical] web browsers in FreeBSD land. I once used Netscape 3.04 thinking it would be faster and take up fewer resources than the latest version, but I was wrong about that. I use Netscape 4.7 now, and it runs very well. It does use more memory, however, but it is negligible on my 32 MB system and FreeBSD's very efficient memory management. Still, I can't wait to get my hands on the FreeBSD version of Opera.

For the occasional mp3 (read: the latest Geeks in Space) I use mpg123. My system can do mono at 44Khz, but 11 or 22Khz mono is more practical. I don't really have enough space for mp3's :(.

I'm afraid every other program on my box falls under the miscellaneous category, as I've found myself using the above programs predominantly. Acrobat Reader (linux version) and Ghostscript are very useful. A scientific calculator, aka xcalc, also gets frequent use. Micq is good as is telnet and ftp. Top is cool, and xkill is killer. Knews is a multi-threaded news reader. XTar is useful. The manual browser xman isn't unique, but it definitely beats Windows 'Help.' My audio mixer is adequate.

The most important design factor, according to Linus, of Linux is that Linux is supposed to be fun. Likewise, I think FreeBSD is supposed to be fun. I have the BSD games installed, and I have the classics Adventure, Dungeon, and Rogue. I have the latest version of NetHack running under Linux binary compatibility. Freeciv is installed in my home directory. For completeness I also have a minesweeper clone and xmahjongg installed.

What I love about FreeBSD

Stability

Won't eat it under heavy loads, and protected memory (read: NO FEAR)

Performance

A customized kernel, pre-emptive multi-tasking, and networking

Configurability

It's a UNIX Thing^TM, or more appropriately, a GNU thing. There isn't anything that can't be customized on a free Unix system.

It's UNIX^TM

It's something that has to be experienced (tasted is a better word).

Freely available

'nuff said.

Hardware recommendations

I'm thinking in terms of UW SCSI, preferably a couple of disks, a good amount of memory and the appropriate amount of L2 cache, and a good keyboard. Don't skimp on the case. If you plan on using X, I suggest the largest monitor you can afford or a flat panel, a comfortable 3-button mouse, and, if you can afford it, one or two Matrox video cards. Otherwise, a 9 inch (S)VGA monitor will do (even monochrome). In any case, make sure you read up on compatible FreBSD slash XFree86 hardware. Oh, CPU? Anything with a built-in math co-processor will do.

I love this operating system.

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