Tuesday, May 18, 2004
State of my Family
The laptop I bought is my fourth computer. I feel like I'm starting a family. Plus I've got my cellphone, which is sort of the family pet, due to its immature functionality of both computation and communication (with the other members of the family, of course). Also, the way the dongles hang off my main machine is reminiscent of a suckling litter, although perhaps I have just taken the metaphor too far.
The point is, I've gotten back into geekdom, and I've always wanted a tech blog to record how I fixed various problems, and to post things I can't find anywhere else. I had a free night so I made this one.
motor is a Dell Latitude CTX that I got off eBay.
I bought motor because I'm working on some Java programs (a J2ME midlet for cellphones and a Swing app), and on nice weekends I don't want to be stuck in the house. I intended to install OpenBSD on it, because I really love the design philosophy behind it.
Since 3.5 just came out, I went ahead and bought the CDs to support the project. The install went INCREDIBLY well. OBSD is also installed on medulla, the 200mHz server/router/whatever box, so I knew it was easy to set up in theory, but I was amazed to find that it detected all the laptop hardware the first time. I didn't have to compile a kernel! I was eager to see what it was like as a desktop OS.
I set up fluxbox, emacs, xmms and gaim. I learned about fluxbox config files and made keyboard navigation easier, because I hate the touchpad. When I get the files the way I want them, I should post them.
Then it came to setting up Java. That's a problem on OpenBSD. Java isn't there. There are ports, or something, adapted from the FreeBSD java, but apparently the J2ME toolkit requires the latest JDK, and though there is a java-1.4 port in the tree, it says it's broken when you try to make it. Well, I installed jikes (open-source, fast Java compiler from IBM) from the package, which is excellent, but it's not a JRE.
I tried installing the jdk-1.3 port from the ports tree. It just finished. It works for the demos. I have yet to try it on something more substantial, and I don't know if J2ME will like it.
So I wanted to try FreeBSD instead, because it's generally thought to support more hardware and software, while still having a lot of the same structure as OpenBSD. Unfortunately, the installation program didn't detect my 3Com PCMCIA network card, and apparently there's no quick way around that. That's a bit silly. It's an ethernet card. It's old. Linux and the BSDs should be at the point where their installations detect every network card out there. It was too complicated for me. I gave up. At this point, it's either I figure out how to do Java on OpenBSD, or install good ol'
I love Gentoo, but it's a pain to set up. I haven't given it a proper try yet; I'll wait until the CD I bought arrives. My old installation CD gave kernel panics -- probably because it was compiled for a P4 and I was running it on a P3. No surprises there. That's when I decided to give OpenBSD Java another shot, with the (rather pleasing) results described above.
The other, less surmountable obstacle to OpenBSD is that the wireless card I just bought is 802.11g, which is in the early stages of support in Linux and FreeBSD but is absolutely not supported in OpenBSD. 802.11g is the new wireless standard. It's faster and more secure. OpenBSD supports the other wireless standards, but this one is too new, and we'll have to wait at least another 6 months before we see support for it. If I get Java working, I'll probably just settle for an 802.11b card. They go for like $10 now, which is impressive.
Java actually runs with decent speed, considering that it's a runtime-compiled language running on top of an Linux-emulation layer on a slow machine.
The point is, I've gotten back into geekdom, and I've always wanted a tech blog to record how I fixed various problems, and to post things I can't find anywhere else. I had a free night so I made this one.
Finding a good UNIX OS for my laptop
motor is a Dell Latitude CTX that I got off eBay.
- 650 mHz P3
- 512 MB of RAM
- 8mb ATI graphics card of some sort
- 14" monitor
- 7 lbs.
- 12 GB hd
- 3Com EtherLink wired NIC (the wireless card is on its way, for better or worse [see below])
- swappable CDROM
I bought motor because I'm working on some Java programs (a J2ME midlet for cellphones and a Swing app), and on nice weekends I don't want to be stuck in the house. I intended to install OpenBSD on it, because I really love the design philosophy behind it.
OpenBSD
Since 3.5 just came out, I went ahead and bought the CDs to support the project. The install went INCREDIBLY well. OBSD is also installed on medulla, the 200mHz server/router/whatever box, so I knew it was easy to set up in theory, but I was amazed to find that it detected all the laptop hardware the first time. I didn't have to compile a kernel! I was eager to see what it was like as a desktop OS.
I set up fluxbox, emacs, xmms and gaim. I learned about fluxbox config files and made keyboard navigation easier, because I hate the touchpad. When I get the files the way I want them, I should post them.
Then it came to setting up Java. That's a problem on OpenBSD. Java isn't there. There are ports, or something, adapted from the FreeBSD java, but apparently the J2ME toolkit requires the latest JDK, and though there is a java-1.4 port in the tree, it says it's broken when you try to make it. Well, I installed jikes (open-source, fast Java compiler from IBM) from the package, which is excellent, but it's not a JRE.
I tried installing the jdk-1.3 port from the ports tree. It just finished. It works for the demos. I have yet to try it on something more substantial, and I don't know if J2ME will like it.
FreeBSD
So I wanted to try FreeBSD instead, because it's generally thought to support more hardware and software, while still having a lot of the same structure as OpenBSD. Unfortunately, the installation program didn't detect my 3Com PCMCIA network card, and apparently there's no quick way around that. That's a bit silly. It's an ethernet card. It's old. Linux and the BSDs should be at the point where their installations detect every network card out there. It was too complicated for me. I gave up. At this point, it's either I figure out how to do Java on OpenBSD, or install good ol'
Gentoo
I love Gentoo, but it's a pain to set up. I haven't given it a proper try yet; I'll wait until the CD I bought arrives. My old installation CD gave kernel panics -- probably because it was compiled for a P4 and I was running it on a P3. No surprises there. That's when I decided to give OpenBSD Java another shot, with the (rather pleasing) results described above.
The other, less surmountable obstacle to OpenBSD is that the wireless card I just bought is 802.11g, which is in the early stages of support in Linux and FreeBSD but is absolutely not supported in OpenBSD. 802.11g is the new wireless standard. It's faster and more secure. OpenBSD supports the other wireless standards, but this one is too new, and we'll have to wait at least another 6 months before we see support for it. If I get Java working, I'll probably just settle for an 802.11b card. They go for like $10 now, which is impressive.
Java actually runs with decent speed, considering that it's a runtime-compiled language running on top of an Linux-emulation layer on a slow machine.
