Computers

Vi User How-To

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Welcome to an introduction and usage study of one of the worlds most common text editors. It is also my favorite style of editor. We cover several sections each detailing a given aspect of the Vi editor.

Table of Contents

Short history
Which Vi is my Vi ?
Initial Fear
Learning Vi
      Required Commands
      Helpful Functions
      A few extra commands
      Making sense of Vi options
      Deletion Wars
      Cut, Copy, and Paste the Vi style !
Options and configuration
How to make a exrc file

Document Version: 0.90.0

This post has the underlying assumption that you want to learn to use the Vi text editor but know jack about it. I won’t insult you but I’ll try to teach it without being to terse or “hand holding”. We all need help but one has to put in a little bit of effort to master a program.

I have always cared more for content and understandable English then for closely following the “laws of the English anguage” so forgive any grammatical errors and ether curse or help improve the content 😛

Short History
In 1976 a man named Bill Joy wrote the Vi text editor for an early BSD release. It took the existing ed and ex line editors and created a visual interface. While ex was a simple line editor vi gave us an interface much more like what we are accustomed to in this era.

Vi is a modal text editor which means that depending on what editing mode one is in at any given time what each key does changes. Vi has thankfully only two editing modes of importance command and insert. Unlike common editors such as Emacs or Kate commands are entered by shifting the entire keyboard into command mode and back into insert mode to continue inserting text. This modal concept is probably the biggest adjustment new users have to make when learning Vi. Some notable influences on the Vi command set was the ADM3A terminal which had the Esc and left Control keys where the Tab and Capslock keys are on modern US_QWERTY keyboards. There was also arrows on the H, J, K, and L keys which intern became the Vi movement keys.

Picture of ADM3A Keyboard

Which Vi is my Vi ?
There have been many vi implementations and clones through the years and on many systems but you can always count on an Unix to have a Vi. By high decree of the POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface for uniX). It would be best that before you try to start learning how to use Vi you learn what type of Vi editor you have. Many GNU/Linux systems will use a Vi clone in place of Vi while BSD Unix’s use nvi. This how to should be relivent to every Vi/Vi Clone but most Vi Clones have a lot more to offer then Vi does.

Vi is the classic BSD
implementation now free and open source under a BSD style license.

Nvi is a re-implementation of Vi used for the 4BSD release when the original Vi was considered encumbered code. This is what is like wise used on Free, Net, Open, PC, and Desktop BSD and the focus of this how to.

Elvis is a Vi clone that adds a number of features and commands. Elvis functions on Unix, Dos, NT, and OS/2 systems both as a console and graphical application. It is standard issue on Slackware Linux for the systems vi program.

Vim or Vi IMproved is a Vi clone that implements many additional features and options. It’s known to run on many platforms including Amiga, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, OpenVMS, OS/2, and Unix like systems. Vim supports several graphical user interfaces including Motif, GTK1, GTK2, and Athena versions. It is also what this post was written with.

Vile was initially derived from an early version of Microemacs in an attempt to bring the “modern” benefits of the Emacs multi-window/multi-buffer editing paradigm to users more comfortable with the vi command-set. Vile functions on DOS, Windows, OS/2, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix like systems.

Viper-mode of the popular Emacs editor tries to emulate many common vi commands and may prove interesting to emacs users and humorous.

It does not matter what Editor one uses as long as one is happy, productive, and effective but I would recommend using a Vi Clone with good documentation. So know any good jokes about Vims 25,000,000,000 page manual ? Hehehe.

You may invoke the vi editor from a console window by typing “vi”, if your using another type of editor or “vi clone” please consult it’s documentation.

Initial Fear
The traditional vi runs in a command window which is enough to scare off many new users. While newer Vi Clones such as Vim and Elvis have graphical user interfaces that can run with such luxurious features as tool bars and menus it is important to know that the editors are still available in the command line environments without loss of functionality.

One of the most confusing things to scare you about learning Vi is the concept of editing modes. Most users are used to an editor that starts with and is always in “insert-mode” that is you type on the keyboard it and writes text to the screen. Vi by default starts in a command mode where the keys are used to issue editing commands such as delete, replace, yank (copy), paste, cut and movement keys and such. When one wants to start writing text they have to enter insert mode. Once you get sed to this idea you will start to grasp Vi much better. When you are working in insert mode Vi will behave in a similar manor to what most users expect a few differences aside (like the Esc key and copy/paste commands). To indirectly quote a man named Jon Lasser about vi editing modes.

When you move your (mouse) pointer out of the screen area, you can’t type in text. You have, in effect, moved from insert mode to command mode. “It’s the same thing,”

Most implementations of Vi including nvi should be able to make use of ones cursor (arrow) keys and the insert/home/pgup/del/home/pgdwn clusters we take for granted but using the arrow keys are less effective then using command mode & the classic movement keys. I’d say you should try to use the cursor keys for simple movement at first because they work in any mode and are less foreign. When some day you find yourself without working cursor keys you will be bloody
happy you learned to use H,J,K,L instead of LEFT, UP, DOWN, RIGHT. Trust me it can happen, I once had a very bad system boot the kind your usually lucky to be able to fix without a rescue disk kind. I had to edit a file and my choices of editors were rather limited (ed, ex, vi, ee). When I ran vi it could not use my cursor keys forcing me to use the H,J,K,L cluster in it’s place. Never before was I so glad to know two ways of doing the same thing in a text editor !

Learning Vi

I will split this section into several groups of commands. When I first tried to learn Vi(m) I didn’t like it because I could not figure it out at the time. After a while on the FreeBSD command line I learned how to use it. In the process I also learned the easiest way to learn how to use Vi, aside from using Vim instead (:help) was to learn things in small pieces. It won’t do you any good to try and learn Vi all at once but if your able to just sit down and inhale it I’ll probably edit in a cheat sheet or a link to one at the end of this how-to.

Required Commands

So named because these are what I feel are the fewest commands one needs to know in order to use Vi. Maybe not use it well but use it as well as Notepad is a good editor. While we are on the subject of Notepad. Just to say it, notepad is a good editor for several reasons:

It is on nearly any Windows system, it’s very simple and light weight.

You don’t need a Ph.D to use it.

It’s also very week and very basic.

Vi like many Vi users prefer Speed, Power, and Efficiency over a small inertial learning curve. Many people say Vi is not intuitive to learn but I must disagree it is only a matter of adopting ones mind to shifting between insert and command modes. The more one learns with Vi the more productive they will be but no one need learn every thing on day one !

These are the core super simple commands you have to know to use Vi like most editors.

Key         Action

h           Move left one character - the left arrow does this as well
j           Move down one line - the down arrow does the same thing
k           Move up one line - the up arrow does this too!
l           Move right one character - Right arrow yet again.
Esc         Enter Command Mode /or cancel commands
i           Enter insert mode - the Insert key will also work
x           Delete the character under the cursor - just like the Delete key.
ZZ          Save file and quit Vi

To tell the truth compared to using Notepad you only learned 3 commands. Esc, i, and ZZ or enter command mode, enter insert mode, and write file and get me out of this crazy editor!

The h, j, k, l, and x keys are analogous to the arrow keys and the insert and delete keys on your keyboard. The only difference is these keys work when nothing else does. Some terminals don’t support luxuries well such as home and end keys so when working on a machine from a remote session or laptop these can be your best friends. You should be able to live with having to press ESC to use commands and go to insert mode to input text.

Helpful Commands

These are more keys and commands that are not necessary to edit a file but do make live a lot easier especially if you often find your self editing text not just creating it. If you have some experience with some thing called regular expressions a few of these might even seem familiar to you.

Key         Action

:           Enter "ex" like commands in a "command line" mode
:w          Write changes to file
:q          Quit Vi
:e file     Open file for editing

/word       Find "word" much like Control+F in many other editors
n           Go to next occurrence of the search term below the current
N           Go to next occurance of the search term above the current one

a           Enter insert mode right of the cursor
A           Enter insert mode at the end of line
o           Insert line below cursor
O           Insert line above cursor
w           Move forward one word
b           Retreat one word
$           Move cursor to the end of the line
^           Move the cursor to the start of the line
Control+u   Page up half a screen
Control+d   Page down half a screen

u           Undo previous command(s) - some Vi clones have unlimited undo/redo
Control+r   Redo the undone command(s) - same as above ^

r           Replace one char and return to command mode
R           Enter Replace mode - works like pressing insert in most editors
c           Change, takes an operator like d. example: cw=changes a word
d     Delete using a following movement command (see below)
dd          Delete entire line

None of these commands are necessary to know but they sorta make life easier. Personally I find these much easier on the wrists then Emacs which uses key combinations using the Control and Meta keys instead of a command mode.

A few words about the “:” key, it enters a little command line mode. When you press the : key in command mode it gives you a command line to type an ex (extended editor) type of command. After you have typed the command you press enter to run it and should return to normal mode. If you need to force a write or quit you can append the “!” Symbol to it. If you are a ex guru or need to enter many commands in this way you might try the “Q” command to enter Ex mode. For example the ZZ command is the same as :wg. One can mix and match actions and movements very well in Vi, for example if one wanted to delete to the end of the line you could use command mode to enter d$ and delete from the cursor to the end of the line. When one shifts between command and insert modes often in there editing style you soon find the a, A, r, o, and O keys very useful. I’ve mentioned a few other modes then command and insert but they are of little importance to you unless your into reading good ocumentation. Consult your Vi implementation for details, for users of nvi it’s nothing to fart about at this stage of learning. Many commands allow one to specify a location or a movement. This is especially true for using the commands for deletion, joining text, copy/cut/paste, and multiple editing buffers (windows) if your vi supports it.

You might want to get used to using most of these commands or at least the concepts be fore we try to tackle such tasks as more advanced delete or copy/paste commands. A coffee break about now is a very good idea.

A few extra commands

These are other commands useful to users but I broke them off from the above list to ease session based learning.

Key         Action

:!cmd       Execute shell command cmd.
:command!   Force command to run, such as force write-quit (:wq!)
:r!cmd      Run cmd in shell and insert it's output in the file

G           Go to end of buffer (the bottom of the file)
1G          Go to line one in the file
nG          Go to line n. So 10G means go to line 10

>>          Shiftwidth text over one indentation level to the right
<<          Shiftwidth text over one indentation level to the left

One cane execute commands from vi that one would usually run in a shell such as bash or cmd.exe. :!dir b “C:Program Files” would be executed just as if one ran the dir command from cmd.exe or command.com. If you want to nab the output of a command into your file use :r!command this is very good if one needs to quickly grab some data thats a fast pipe away. The G command is a go to without any arguments it goes to the bottom of the file. If one was to type a number before it it would go to that line number. The >> and << are useful for shifting text around but have likely little need for users not into programming or scripting e.t.c. So I have nothing to say about these commands. Making sense of Vi optionsOne of the worst things is that by default vi generally does not tell you what mode you are in or where the cursor is this can make life harder. Lucky for us Vi has the ability to set options. Really this belongs in a customizing vi section and I’ll probably paste it there but I think knowing some of this now will help you. You can set options thus turning them on, off, or setting a value :set option :set nooption :set option=10 If you want to see all the options available you can type :set all if you have a good Vi clone you should be able to get some documentation on what all of these do, for the sake of making Vi more friendly we will cover some good stuff here. :set showmode :set ruler ;set ignorecase These three options (in order of appearance) will make vi show you the current mode at the bottom of the screen, show you the cursors position as line,character at the bottom of the screen, and turn off case sensitivity when searching in a file. You can make a startup file that vi will read when it starts that will set options for you. Ex/Vi and Nex/Nvi use the /etc/exrc and ~/.exrc files but depending on your implementation it may be different such as Vim or Elvis. I don’t have much experience with Elvis but for Vim it reads the .vimrc file(s). You can turn these off pretty easy like so :set noshowmode :set noruler :set noignorecase If you want to make a .exrc file for your self you can store commands in it that are what you would type after hitting : so a .exrc file enabling showmode would look like this: set showmode and saved as ~/.exrc if you want to leave a comment in the file preside it with a single ” quote. The ” Comment marks that entire line after the ” character not to be read when starting up. A few options that may interest you are autoindent, tabstop, shiftwidth, wrapmargin, and warplen. By default when one tries to type past the end of the screen it rolls to the line below on screen but is treated as one long line. One can try and make this more like most editors word wrapping with some play time. I will only discuss the autoindent option since it is some thing you will ether long for or hate if you use vi for editing code, scripts, web sites e.t.c. When one sets autoindent on vi starts a new line with the same indentation as the last. The word indentation is a little odd in my opinion if your not a programmer so I’ll give a short example of how it goes. 

if i is-greater-then 0
      do this code
      and this code
else
      do this instead
endif

If typing that with autoindent on pressing return after typing “do this code” would automatically indent the next line to the same level. You can press Control+D to kill the autoindent such as if you wanted to place the “else” in our pseudo code at the same level as the “if” and “endif”. Deletion WarsIf you remember awhile ago when we both were still sane. I mumbled about being able to combine a command and a movement. This is pretty much true with most movement, deletion, and “visual” commands (visual as in cut, copy, paste). x deletes the letter under the cursor but what if we want to delete some thing else? We can use the d key along with a movement specifier if you recall the movement keys h, j, k, l, $, ^ we can combine them all with d to make it mean delete this way. So d^ really means delete to-start-of-line. This makes for very versatile work and it’s not just limited to deletion. Much like we can use a number and G to go to a line like 275G to go to the 275th line of a file. Nvi users will especially need to know this for dealing with copy/paste as it lacks a Visual mode that makes it more like other editors. A very fast way to delete an entire line is the dd command or deadly delete 🙂 You can prefix a number of lines to a command as well, so for example 10dd will delete the current line and the next ten for you. Unlike most editors Vi does not really know you have a mouse, although Vi Clones should if they have a GUI. Some like Elvis and Vim have a “visual” mode that can highlight text using movement keys and then delete it or do the cut, copy, and paste antics with it. 

Key         Action

y           Yank (copy) - selects text in a similar manner to the d command
yy          Yank line - selects text in a similar manner to the dd command
yyp         Duplicate line - copy/paste current line on the line below.
p           Put (paste) text
v           Enter visual mode - for some Vi Clones

One should really know both ways if possible. Personally I prefer visual mode, it’s more like what we are all used to. That is you select (aka highlight) text then do with it what you want, such as copy or delete. With classic Vi as included in FreeBSD at least one will get an error. If one wanted to copy the current line and the next tree. You would type 3y in command mode. Go to where you want to paste it and press p key in command mode. This is more or less how it works in traditional Vi. This is how it can also be done in a Vi clone like Vim. You can enter visual mode (v key). Once you do that the editor starts treating the cursor movements just like when you old the left mouse button and start dragging the pointer around. Only it works without a mouse ! Once you’ve high lighted some text you can act on it.So for example if you pressed “vwwd” you would have just deleted from the current cursor position to the next two words. You can use the “c” command to “cut” in visual mode. I have not tried elvis much but it should be similar to vim. Search and Replace If you are familiar with regular expressions, sed, awk, ed, or ex you should be at home right here. The search & replace takes syntax like this ‘n,m s/find expression/change expression/cmd’. So if I wanted to change every occurrence of ‘vi’ to ’emacs’ in this file I could do this. :1,$s/vi/emacs rules/g That is from line 1 to end of lines search for the string vi and replace it with emacs globally. If I only wanted to change it for n through m lines I could have tried some thing like this :260,285s/emacs/vi/g Regular expressions are similar to the wild cards used by the shell but they are different. Same concept (imho) but different syntax. Much like C and C++ maybe. A detailed Analise of regular expressions would be out side the scope of this how-to and totally irregular 🙂 I suggest the following links for more info about regex (regular expressions) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regex http://www.regular-expressions.info/ Back in the days before operating systems when software ran on the bare hardware. Stuff like this “regular expression” mumbo-jumbo was a thing just for the uber-nerdy scientist but now it’s in the power of your editor. It should also be worth learning how to use regex. As it is a common syntax with many uses. The better you know regular expressions the better you will be able to use tools like sed, grep, awk, find, perl, ex, and many more. Options and Configuration We touched on this back in section 4.4.Making Sense of Vi options but will go over a few things again. Saves your scroll bars eh? 🙂 Vi has a number of options that adjust the way it behaves, here is screen dump of the default setup of nvi. As used on FreeBSD 6.1-Release. 

~
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
noaltwerase     noextended      matchtime=7     report=5        term="xterm"
noautoindent    filec=""        mesg            noruler         noterse
autoprint       flash           nomodeline      scroll=12       notildeop
noautowrite     nogtagsmode     noprint=""      nosearchincr    timeout
backup=""       hardtabs=0      nonumber        nosecure        nottywerase
nobeautify      noiclower       nooctal         shiftwidth=8    noverbose
cdpath=":"      noignorecase    open            noshowmatch     warn
cedit=""        keytime=6       optimize        noshowmode      window=24
columns=85      noleftright     path=""         sidescroll=16   nowindowname
nocomment       lines=25        print=""        noslowopen      wraplen=0
noedcompatible  nolisp          prompt          nosourceany     wrapmargin=0
escapetime=6    nolist          noreadonly      tabstop=8       wrapscan
noerrorbells    lock            noredraw        taglength=0     nowriteany
noexrc          magic           remap           tags="tags"
directory="/tmp/"
msgcat="/usr/share/vi/catalog/"
paragraphs="IPLPPPQPP LIpplpipbp"
recdir="/var/tmp/vi.recover"
sections="NHSHH HUnhsh"
shell="/usr/local/bin/ksh93"
shellmeta="~{[*?$`'""
Press any key to continue [: to enter more ex commands]:

You can get a screen like this by using the :set all command. Every option or “variable” can be turned off by appending ‘no’ to the command. So if we wanted to turn on autoindent we would :set autoindent We could also have used the short form and typed :set ai but that makes it harder to read. Why this matters I’ll tell you in a sec 😛 To turn it off we would then type this. :set noautoindent Some options take a numeric value and are set like this :set shiftwidth=4 I’ll try to quickly document each of these options the best I can ones of value. So you can choose what you prefer. I’d suggest if you want to modify Vi’s behavior to test a few options to see how you like the changes. If I have no information about the option, it is not listed. Option: autoindent Short form: ai Value: on/off Default: noautoindent Description: When turned on ‘ai’ will automatically start the new line to at the same depth as the previous line when breaking lines (i.e. pressing enter). The value of the ‘shiftwidth’ variable is used when inserting tabs. When your done you can undo the autoindent by pressed the control+d. I’ve yet to figure out if it is a bug or a configuration error but if tabstop and shiftwidth have different values. Control+d will not un-indent the line correctly if sw and ts are not equal. Line one line two Autoindented Cntrl+D Option: autoprint Short Form: ap Value: on/off Default: noautoprint Description: I don’t see any effects but my reference says ‘Display changes after each command.’ Option: autowrite Short Form: aw Value: on/off Default: off Description: Automatically write changes to file after certain events. Option beautify Short Form: bf Value: on/off Default: off Description: Ignore all control characters during input (except tab, newline, formfeed). Pressing control+letter in insert mode when no command exists will result in text like this by default. How to delete a tpyo�� No I’m not trying to insult emacs users, I would probably use M-B M-D to fix such a typo when using Evil Macs. Option: columns Shot Form: col Value: numeric Default: varies Description: The number of columns to use for the text area. Example, how to set vi to 85 columns wide. :set columns=85 Option: edcompatible Short Form: ed Value: on/off Default: off Description: Use ed-like features on substitute, probably more useful for Bill Joy then you or me. Option: errorbells Short Form: eb Value: on/off Default: on Description: Sound the system bell when you make a booboo. Option: exrc Short Form: ex Value: on/of Default: off Description: Vi can read an exrc file that will run a set of commands at startup. Basically a configuration file for setting your options (see next chapter). Option: hardtabs= Short Form: ht= Value: numeric Default: 8 Description: Set boundary for hardware tabs, may be useful for a Teletype. Option: ignorecase Short Form: ic Value: on/off Default: off Description: Ignore case in regex expressions. Option: lisp Short Form: ? Value: on/off Default: off Description: Turn on lisp mode, I think it aids the formating of old lisp code. Option: list Short Form: ? Value: on/off Default: off Description: Display all tabs, end of lines. Turn this on for fun 🙂 Option: magic Short Form: ? Value: on/off Default: on Description: Enable more regex expressions Option: mesg Short Form: ? Value: on/off Default: on Description: Allows mesgs to be sent to terminal, see man mesg(1) Option: number Short Form: nu Value: on/off Default: off Description: Enables line numbering, this can help when debugging files. I usually have a mapping to enable it with the F2 key in my ~/.exrc file. Option: prompt Short Form: ? Value: on/off Default: on Description: Enalbes the ‘:’ prompt, if you disable this you can make ex behave more like ed. You probably don’t want this. Option: readonly Short Form: ro Value: on/off Default: off Description: Prevents you from writing the file unless you override it like so. :w! Option: redraw Short Form: ? Value: on/off Default: off Description: Redraw screen when edits are made, probably works like the Control+L command (refreshes screen). Option: report= Short Form: ? Value: numeric Default: =5 Description: Report changes if they effect more lines then report=n. Such as when using the delete/yank/join commands e.t.c. Option: shiftwidth= Short Form: sw= Value: numeric Default: 8 Description: How many characters to use when shifting width with the >> and << commands e.t.c. If you plan to use autoindent, the value of sw and ts should be the same (see below). Option: showmatch Short Form: sm Value: on/off Default: off Description: The cursor will flash and move to the openning {, }, (, ), [, or ] when typing a closing one on screen. Option: showmode Short Form: ? Value: on/off Default: off Description: Shows which mode you are in such as command, insert, append, or replace. This is so useful its a perfect choice for the beginners exrc file. Option: tabstop= Short Form: ts= Value: numeric Default: 8 Description: How many characters to display a 'tab' as, mostly of use for programmers. Common choices are 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. It has been suggested that one should not change this setting but instead adjust the shiftwidth setting. I can only say from personal experience if you change tabstop but forget to change shiftwidth to the same. Auto-indent will be a bit off :-) Option: wrapmargin= Short Form: wm= Value: numeric Default: 0 Description: Set the right margin. Setting a value greater than 0 will word wrap n spaces from the edge of the screen. So :set wm=5 would make the display wrap lines when ever it hit the 5th to last line of the terminal. Option: wrapscan Short Form: ws Value: on/off Default: on Description: Searches wrap around end of file How to make a exrc fileThe exrc file is very simple. Commands are read from the ~/.exrc file just as they are from the ‘:’ command line in Vi. Placing this line in your exrc file set autoindent Is the same as tying :set autoindent in command mode. You can use the double qoute or ” character to comment a line. ” This line is not read by Vi set tabstop=6 Here is an example of what my ~/.exrc file might look like with extra comments. 

" Tell me what mode I'm in between coffee breaks
set showmode
" Press F2 to turn on line numbering, make the ^M with ctrl+v ctrl+m
map  :set number
" Alias ';' to :
map ; :

UNDER CONSTRUCTION 

__            ___      ___  
|  |         /  /    /  /     
|  ||        /  / /   /__/ /   
|  ||       /  / /    __/    
|  ||      /  / /   ___    
|  ||     /  / /   /  /    
|  ||    /  / /   /  / /    
|  ||   /  / /   /  / / 
|  ||  /  / /   /  / /  
|  || /  / /   /  / /
|  ||/  / /   /  / / 
|  |/  / /   /  / /  
|     / /   /  / /   
|    / /   /  / /    
|   / /   /  / /   
|__/ /   /__/ / 
__/    __/

More PBI

by

Well I’ve E-Mailed Kris Moore for some info, wonder what I may find out. Depending on the results it might allow me to make for a more flexible method of dealing with my PBI.*sh files.

I also might have a few ideas for making a “automatic” PBI creation tool that I will need to toy around with later. Not 100% sure how well it would work yet.

I suppose, if ya can’t beat them join’em. Then remember if it blows up this wasn’t my idea !

PBI Systems

by

Well tis time to plan for war or for peace. I can only see two roads before me.
In a funky branch of science where psychology and history meet at a decision
point that breaks into two possible futures. At first I didn’t know which to to
choose but then it just popp’d in there. A man has great capacity for both good
or evil, it’s this choice that splits that destiny apart.

While one could harbor malice towards some thing is normal for a human, I have
none to use. I’ve long rejected such ideas in favor of ones that work. So, I
see that I must take the option that poses the least threat.

On one road, I see the changes to the PBI system to be used (read abused).
Using both volume and redundant checks of quality control push the PBI system
for all it’s worth till it ether busts or grows strong.

To the other, adopt to it and fight for its growth. Well ether way I’m going to
raise all kinds of bloody screaming if quality control standards are not
maintained. If Pkg_add becomes the John Doe of the PBI word proper auditing and
quality management is required. The number of times pkg_add PBI have leaked
through testing even when it was strictly a case for “pkg_add -f pkg.tbz” ==
You will be skinned alive being the accepted Community/Developer standard. Even
PC-BSD Developers would occasionally bend this rule and bypass auditing (or
worse…). SO what the heck, why not go with it.

This is a change I hoped to see come with a much stronger infrastructure and a
larger user base. Hopefully one done after proper documentation was ever
created. To be honest PBI documentation is kinda, uhhh scratched out? Yet how
does this change come to us ? By a loss of principals – it wasn’t after people
complained. It wasn’t after user after user put up requests on the wish list
only to be mostly ignored. It wasn’t after people yelled for a more traditional
approach, it wasn’t after die hard FreeBSD people turned there noses at the
idea. It wasn’t that a flaw was found in an imperfect system and a fix was
needed. It wasn’t that as it is the PBI system couldn’t work. It’s simply that
they would rather have it done NOW then later. Why work to make some thing work
the way it was supposed to? When you can just change the rules to match your
hand of cards ? I’m sorry but thats the way I feel – I don’t mean to accuse any
one and don’t.

We can now use pkg_add in PBI creation at a very small level because it’s the
easy solution. When a problem of commercial importance chopped up. Well excuse
me and my big fat Johnny Reb ass but I’m starting to agree with a few FreeBSD
sys-admins. A clean, functional, elegant design should be the end result. Not
some thing hacked together with chewing gum and cloths pins. Even after public
debate about the similar issues they didn’t care – they get a problem getting a
commercial app to abide by it and they change the rules. When I had “offically”
left working on any PBI I did so seeing a system showing signs of reform, one I
knew would stand. Now I see it caving in on it self.

Ok so we have to live with pkg_add app PBI full of libs not added ok now we need to think here. The pkg_add can only be the main app well if we draw that line very easy at cd /usr/ports/cat/app && make package && cd /usr/local/Projects/PBI && mkdir app && cp /usr/ports/Packages/All/app.tbz ./

Then we need to check this package to make sure it only contains libs unique to
the project or else fool around /w it and the +* files to make a new package to
force or risk breaking some thing. Ok thats good enough but what if we have
some problems loading a Lib out of /Programs/$1/libs at run time ? OK well
since the PC-BSD Devs say it’s ok to do a pkg_add of the main app. Why don’t we
just move that into it’s own PBI and pkg_add that after making the user install
it 😛 Heck The lead Developer included a handful of Linux RPMs to make one of
his PBI work since it was a Linux program any way (which was not pkg_add’d IIRC)

Now we have a simple case here – We need to test if the pkg is all ready
installed abort it with an error to the user. When removing it it would be nice
if we could do a fast check to see if any thing depends on the package, such as
user installed ports !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! und abort the uninstall
accordingly. I.e. Make sure for totally clean install/removal of pkg’s not just
force them in/out with a sledge hammer like a dumb fuku! Trust me I’ve seen it
a lot of times. It would also be nice if the user updated a PBI using ports if
we could just *remove* things from the PBI Uninstall menu.

Ok so that sorts that now. What about docs on PBI creation ? We got a few how
to make XYZ FAQs on the FAQ. Other wise it’s horse dung. For example one of the
best tutorials says to tarball stuff inside the PBI which is basically a
compressed archive all ready. Kris Moore tells me not to do that – any one see
that in documentation ? HELL NOOOO!!! So we see a few PBI using it that
followed that tutorial. I’m oh most afraid to go to the SVN if you see my
train of thought here.

I see a possible return to PBI Development if I’m made to live in this words
new concept of PBI. There was only a few reasons I never jumped off the boat
and swam for FreeBSD shore after learning I could live without PC-BSD. I saw
PC-BSD as the brightest hope for the future, not only for Unix on a Desktop but
as a real operating system, world class. That was one of the reasons I didn’t
just drop off the scene. So here I am for better or worse it seems.

I think I may start compiling a list of ports to prepare PBI’s for in this “new
order” try to get a mass production thing going once I have time to get every
thing ready op. Then let operation Justice-Rainbow commence, details classified
with only beneficial results for PC-BSD included. I’m not sure yet for this.

Do I really want PC-BSD to succeed in every way possible? Yes but can I support
a project I feel has issues with ethical, moral, and principal concerns I’m not
sure. Well ether way I hope www.pbidir.com will see so many PBI coming in they
won’t know what to do with, I only hope they are the right kind. The good kind
made with love and craftsmanship – not shoddy pieces of crap that brings a
Graphical RPM Installer into this new world. Some people know what my feelings
are about RPMs..

Sigh, even though I know I must follow the light course I think they would
deserve it if I took the darker path. I just can’t willingly do that….
(censored). I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. I’ve got studies in 6
languages + html/css, I want to install lighttpd/mysql/php on my FreeBSD box so
I can study PHP. I still have not set up my printer. I’ve got to redo a history
test that the USPS lost, least it wasn’t my final (upper 90s pass). I gotta do
a Biology course *joy*. I’d love to just set to work on what I want to do. I’d
love to just dive in to things and create the program I know I can do given the
right time… A strong language reference and documentation database and
inhaling a few dozen manuals, learning ether QT or GTK based GUI development.
PBI it and vola oh how I wish I had the time… With a week off if I didn’t
have School I could put a nice dent into a few things that really need them
done. C and Ruby are my friends, it’s time I get to know them better and have
a go with QT me thinks.

One mad Spider !

by

For the first time, the PC-BSD project has irk’d the wrong button on my panel. In what appears to be issues with commerical software being able to abide the same quality standards and “short-commings” of the PBI system that joe packager has to deal with. Pkg_add of the main program is now allowed in a PBI. So I guess if I wanted to make a PBI of Xine I could force pkg_add Xine and no one would care weather or not that pkg_add’d the xine lib(s) used in Kaffine and then deleted them when forcing a pkg_delete ! (Still in the hypo-theory field here). Still I find this un acceptible. Such a change should have been made all of 3 weeks after PBI’s started installing into /Programs instead of another area prefixed with My 🙂

In short they have had a lot of time to deside this but they do it now why ? To me it feels as if it’s because compiled Win4BSD can’t run that way or because with the PBI system as it is (now was) breaks it. Win4BSD does not look open source to me and I have no other problem with paying for such a program. If the program needs to be changed internally to run on PC-BSD as a PBI *They should do the Frigging work*. If it can’t just work right with the way a PBI installed program is supposed to because of the PBI system rather then the program. * PC-BSD is flibbing late about making changs to fix this ! *. In short I’m very annoyed that it looks as if a commercial project can make an Open Source Operating System bow down to cater to it in order to put their product on the offical PBI directory with a stamp of approval. It would seem Win4BSD Distribute the product only in binary form. The Win4BSD people all ready offer the Schweine of a PBI for download on their own mirror. Why should PC-BSD bend over backwards to get a pkg_add frontend PBI of a commerical product on offical mirrors. It makes no sense !!

PBI were ment to be easy to install/uninstall and not touch the system directly. Allowing oen to uss a pkg_add of say konversation but not adding qt/kde pkg’s via the PBI is one thing if done right. You also have to remove any lib’s from the pkg used in the PBI before using it e.t.c. to make sure which is another level of work on a PBI Developer. * a frigging nightmare for PBI testers as well if they ever forget to read the scripts before installing *. If you want a front end to pkg_add theres no reason to PBI it. Just use a KDialog ina install.sh file…

I’ve Contemplated removing all of my PBI installs (reinstall via ports) and demanding my XMMS, Megamek, and Blackbox+BBKeys+BBConf+BBPager+Docker PBIs removed from pbidir but what good would any of it do ? I’m only a PC-BSD user, a mighty annoyed one at that. I’m not the kind of person to “jump ship” when stung but this irks me. I’ve all ready tried to distance my self from PBI Development for my own issues but this is beyond issue. How to wage a war for principals slain by it’s founders? I’m not sure yet… Find a way I very well may. All I can say is I learned a very good phrase in German to day for what I have to say to them.

/* retracted */

This is not the last time my voice will speak.

BPM

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I’ve been busy doing a few things with my laptops installed PBI’s today, got a chance to try out BPM. That is the Bsd Ports Manipulator. It’s a development build and warns you as such on start up.

During the install it prompts you if you want to install the ports collection, I think it should only ask if you have not installed ports but it asked me any way. Reminds me I need to cvsup later. One fatal flaw in the BPM PBIs script is that it does not work on the PC-BSD 1.3Beta which changed from cvsup to csup. I posted on the forums about it. If some one needs to install the ports tree they can use the PC-BSD System program to fetch ports (via the “tasks” tab). K-Menu->Settings->System Administration if you care. There is also the portsnap method and CVSUP/CSUP for command line usage.

portsnap fetch extract

OR

cvsup -L 2 /root/ports-supfile

csup seems to be the same as cvsup on basic usuage aside from the name. On regular FreeBSD systems you can use a copy of the supfile in /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ if you set the mirror. PC-BSD prepairs you one for ports and one for system sources but theres more in that ^^ directory. Back to BPM

BPM offers us no configuration that I can find and seems to use a GTK+ interface. I personally think GTK is a nice look & feel but it doesn’t intregrate well with KDE which uses QT. All thats pointless to most users, just remember BPM dun’t look as pretty as Konqueror for all intents and purposes. It offers a quick check of all ports available, all installed ports, e.t.c. as well as the catagories in a left plane. A top right plane shows the ports in the catagory and the bottom right plane shows discriptions. Works pretty nice and looks sorta like ones E-Mail clients. One can also run a simple search. It’s just a standard search afaik no support for regex which also is not of importance to most users !

To install the program just select it and click the instal botton. You can break it into steps if you only want to do parts of it. I.E. fetch, checksum check, build, install, and clean. Just checking install does it all. You can click details to get a embedded console out put and even open a terminal from the app. It also supports uninstalling the thing. It’s very nice but lacks in a few areas.

No support for portupgrading/downgrading
No support that I know of yet for packages (maybe a plus actually 😛 )
No support that I know of yet for searching with Regular expressions

It does however give you a very nice simple interface to make installing software the FreeBSD way very easy. I admit for once I did sorta skip the EULA basically so I don’t remember the licensing terms other then it’s free to use. If it is open source it might be worth my while to look into this application more.

food time.

by

Well after stints of packet loss and high pings with the ol’ISPs DNS server things seem stable again. Since I made a bit of a booboo when I uninstalled Gaim (pbi) to try to install it via pkg’s so I could try installing an X-Fire plugin and OTR didn’t go well. Note to self always use ports for any thing big ! I’ve been learning to live with Kopete. It’s got the level of configuration options one would expect from a KDE program. While Gaim feels like a super enhanced version of the old (pre trijon or w/e) AOL client. Kopete feels more like the regular MSNMSGR client. I prefer Gaim really, even the AOL client was alright until they made it bloat ware.

The biggest reason to use applications like Gaim, Kopete, Trillion e.t.c. is they support many protocols ! Gaim is plugin based dunno about Kopete. Generally a Multi-Protocol Instant Messenger (MPIM :P) Client. Should support the basics, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google, ICQ, IRC (if not the best clients…), Jabber e.t.c. Kopete is pretty well rounded but I prefer Gaim personally. After customing it to behave more Tabed IM based (ala aim style) instead of multi-window heck (bye bye msn style) it’s quite good. It *THANK GOD* lets you change the style of message displays – VERY IMPORTANT change it quick if you IM a lot, trust me ! Default font should be the standard for KDE in my case it was Sans Serif. To me it’s a no frills font, changed it to Bitstream Vera Sans for now. Usuually I try to keep logged into AIM do to a few issues with X-Fire on Unix/Linux/BSD/Mac 8=) Most of the [SAS] uses both and formerly AIM was required for member ship and a Live Ops Warning/Deployment system IIRC.

Really I think I prefer IRC which is good for a more casual chat. FRI IRC is more a “Chat Room” thing then One-On-One 111 commu for most usage (afaic). MSN’s ok, offical clients emotes were ok when I used it, if they are like what MSN Gaming Zone has now its great. AIM *had* a good client but emotes that sucked. What I like about aim more then msn is you can have an addy people can reach you at but they don’t need to be added to a buddy list to contact you. Which is nice since I prefer IMs to phone calls and one can always restrict it. MSN/X-Fire follow what may be a more traditional model. Only buddy list contacts can reach you. I’m tempted to try ICQ some time but I don’t know any one who uses it often, most of my friends use ether MSN or AIM but mostly we all settle on X-Fire haha.

Given some recent issues I’m very tempted to try and start learning Germain. At least to read/write it, I know at one point I was getting very good at reading signs in MoH =/. Germany has always interested me, in a number of ways as have a few other countries cultures. Maybe it’s because of my studies about WWII and military history. The Germain language I’ve never learned much of, like many people I pick up a few words here/there in other languages in passing. Needless to say its one of the countries I’d like to vist if I ever had a world trip. I wouldn’t want to live outside of the US but it would be nice to travel around the world a little. Any country that has H&K Weapons is worth a vist I’m sure 🙂

I know all of 1 or 2 words in Japanse, maybe same in Chinese. 3 or 4 words or more of Italian most of which I can’t say in polite convo and wouldn’t dare try to spell. Me and my brother are two of the only people I know who can say FU in another language hehe. Not that we do, I don’t and he prefers the English version just like our Mother (her favorite 4 letter word 8=) ). A couple of words in Spanish and French (more ladder then former). I know Italian, French, and Spanish are all very simular and learning one would make it easier to learn the others. I don’t know how many words I remember in Klingon, dang pronoucing those right are pesky. Most of my exp. With the German language has been from my WWII studies actually, so it’s mostly related to military words/terms. Not very good for a conversation really. Need less to say if it’s not a computer language I’m not really multi-lingruel. Being an American and a Computer-noid. I mostly encounter people that speak English or Spanish, ocassionally both. When online usually its ether French if they don’t speak english, some times Germain but more often German/English then French/English speaking. I’ve met about 2 or 3 people that are really good with many languages in my net time. While I have nothing aganst France, Germain interests me more <_< Being able to read the language and understand it would be my first goal, writing it second and being able to speak it properly would have to be done along side the first if I’d ever manage it. One thing I do like about my native language is that it’s so screwed up, any native speaker of English will know what your talking about. Sure US/UK is diffrent for a number of things, I remember a funny post Rouge once made about UK English taking over the world or some thing hehe. Yet the language is so nuts at least on this side of the pond. From some of the issues I’ve seen in translations I’m not sure how two people of the same country can understand one another some times, especially in a language like Italian. I know in the US people talk diffrent from place to place in prounced style and spelling but it’s not much till you hit slang. IMHO proper English makes about as much logical sense as horse dung rotting on the wall. So obiously with my opinions of my own language what harm is there in learning about another for fun and function ? If ones going to try and learn another language may as well be one that one may enjoy. I don’t think there is any thing worse then English unless your talking machine code. I’m also a kind of nut, I know C++ is more used but I know more C because I enjoy C better. I think I should start splitting entries because they tend to get huge and I usually edit them shortly after if I find a reason. Think I’ll start trying to learn the basics over the weeki. I’ve got a Biology test to finish, a history test to do again. The USPS lost it I guess b/c it didn’t get to the school. A “tea” trip in the morning s’like a quarter to 0400 here and gotta be out before 1100. Best go to bed before the dog disowns me. It’s funny, for some reason after about 2100 they start staring at ya as if to say whens bed time ! LOL Sleep, sweet sleep now if the ol’brain would shut the frig up.

vimrc

by

Post best viewed from here

Ahh what a day. I’ve spent most of my time ether on the forums or in my beloved editor of choice (vim). I desided for some odd reason to rewrite my vim resource files. I’ve more or less completed my ~/.vimrc file and will worry about my ~/.gimvrc file later. Really I rarly use the GUI off win32. I basically like using vim in konsole because I can quickly step in and out of editing, ether by forcing vim into the background (control+z, type fg to return to it). Yet because cmd.exe is the worst terminal I have ever used, poor if any support for cut, copy, and paste. Ignores the mouse for the most part and Windows has the tab completion of a fart in the wind. I’m kinda getting used to zsh’s after using tcsh so much hehe.

Heres my vimrc file so far, edited for a few things. The syntax is about as simple as a shell script or “vim script” but the ” double quote works like the # and // comments in most languages. White space it doesn’t care for but it does care about line endings. Since I share most things between Windows XP, PC/Free BSD, and GNU/Linux + several computers I have to be portable in many ways. I started the file on Windows with my file format set for Win/DOS end of lines (:set ffs=dos), vim detects it and uses whats there. I usually set mine as “ffs=dos,unix,mac” so I don’t have to convert my files End of Lines (EoL) when I send some one a text file. If I use UNIX eols theres no carriage returns in Notepad, it’s too dumb to figure it out unlike many many other editors. Sad through is you can always count on some one to have notepad or a simular editor. Gnomes editor and KDE’s KWrite are actually rather nice though. When I tried to run my now complete vimrc on PC-BSD I got a zillion errors and I new I didn’t screw it up that bad, infact only one entry was wrong. I quickly figured out it must have been the line feeds, the fact that I had just setup a keybind to strip off the pesky ^M’s you get in some files helped hehe. I couldn’t find any quick ways to convert the EOLs so I looked them up in Wikipeda and found a way to do it with pearl, I now have a pdos2unix and punix2dos script to do the job when given an input file name and an output file name.

I’ve been told customizing Vim can be bad b/c of having to work with standard vim/vi but I’m a fruit -> If I want Vim I call vim and if I want Vi I call vi. FreeBSD uses nvi for vi, not vim like some GNU/Linuxes do. If some Linux Distro doesn’t make vim start as vi compatible without special changes it’s not my problem. I learned to use vim with just the example vimrc file. After that using Vi was easy after an hour or two. I also remember which I’m using by the fact that I call vi as vi and vim as vim + the status line I keep around.

Lines that start with two “‘s are comments just for this post

"Terry M. P***** personal vimrc file

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"Editing Options
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

"Don't be VI compatible - Keep this at top of file !
set nocompatible
""Setting vim to be vi compatible makes changes to make it more pure Vi, I don't care for
""this as this is VIM not VI, if I wanted a pure Vi clone I'd use one.

" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start
""This makes life a lot easier, just trust me.

" Wrap text at n chars with a line break
set textwidth=80
set wrap
set lbr
"" To keep console portability I used to break my lines around 76~78 char
"" I'm trying this to make Vim more like other editors. Out of the box when  you write
"" a line two long for the screen it continues on the line below and is numbered as one
"" line. With these settings it breaks them like most other editors at my specified
"" 80 chars. Not sure if I will keep it but worth a test. -> Prolly good for Vim newbies

" Use spaces instead of tabs
set expandtab 
set tabstop=6
""I generally like spaces and monospace fonts more for indentation and coding.
""I do like using tabs for manually aligning data in a table in ASCII.

"set min # of spaces for numberwidth. It grows as needed
set numberwidth=2
""This keeps down the size used for the thing /w the line numbers. Defualt is 4.

      """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
      "Tabbed Editing
      """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
      set showtabline=1
""Only show the list of tabs when theres more then one. 2=always, 0=never

"set prefered line enders
set ffs=unix,dos,mac
""Type :help ffs for more info, can be set in GVIM via options menu.
"enable filetype detection
filetype on
"turn off ft plugin and indent
filetype plugin off
filetype indent off

"Enable syntax highlighting
syntax on
"" Syntax highlighting is very good, does stuff like making comments blue, keywords green
"" strings red e.t.c. Very nice for markup, scripting, config files, and programming.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
" Keybindings
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

"Use the ";" as a duplicate of ":" makes life so much easier
"for some odd reason it cannot be followed with a comment on it's line!
:nma ; :
"" I personally think typing ; instead of pressing shift + : is the way it should be

"F1 turns on spellchecking in current buffer
map  :setlocal spell spelllang=en_us
"" I only want spell checking for certain files so this lets us turn it on when we want it
"" and just in the current buffer (like file)

"F2 turn on line numbering
map  :set number
""I don't want line numbering unless it's a source file or a big document. Pressing this
"" key we turn it on when wanted.

"F10 rids us of ^M after carriage returns
map  :%s/^M/ /g
""You have to make the ^M by pressing control+v control+m for this to work.
"" Some times you'll get pesky ^M at all the EOLs and it annoys me - strip them
 
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"User Interface Options
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"Always show the status bar with file name e.t.c.
set laststatus=2
"" 0=never, 1=only if more then one file/buffer/tab
"Show %of file remaining in statusbar
set ruler 
"" I use thse two this b/c I like knowing what line/column I'm on un obtusivly + file name
"" and how far into the file overall I am.

    """""""""""""""""""""""""""
    " MOUSE
    """""""""""""""""""""""""""
    "Start with mouse support
    set mouse=a
    "Make pointer an I-Beam in insert mode
    set mouseshape=i:beam
    "Hide the mouse when typing text (GUI only)
    set mousehide 
"" I'm used to being able to scroll around with my mouse wheel :)
"" Try :help mouseshape to look at what you can do with the mouse pointer. X11 supports
"" more options then Windows.

"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"General Preferences
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""

"Command history
set history=50
"" Remebers the last 50 commands entered via :command

"automatic re-reading of changed open files
"set autoread
"" Gotta test this, basically if you edit in vim and edit with another app. It will try
"" to re-read the file.

" Switch on search highlighting - use :noh to turn it off after a search
set hlsearch
""highlights all matches to a /search

"ingore case when searching
set ignorecase
"" just like grep -i "I guess"

"set cmd line size
set cmdheight=2
""This makes the command line at the bottom, where you see the ":" when entering commands
"" be 2 lines high. Not really important IMHO

__________________________________________________

Some changes I plan, if it’s starting with the GUI I’ll have it set it so I can right click on miss spelled words and correct them. you can move the cursor to the word and press z= for a list of corrections, and use ]s and [s to search forward/back. Some times I just scroll with the mouse when proof reading so this helps. You can do a :set “mousemodel=popup_setpos” to get it after you turn on spell checking. I want to set it up so I can quickly convert a files format between DOS and UNIX via F11 and F12, should be possible.

I’ve downloaded a few things from http://www.vim.org/scripts/ that I want to toy with. One was a pack of 140 themes for gvim gotta sort that hehee. Another was a Matrix screen saver. It’s pretty nice if you speed it up but on my system it makes me use like 50~60% CPU judging by GKrellm2 my favorite GTK Krell system monitoring app.

One of the reasons I love vim very much is it’s very relaxing to us. Since I play games often as I can get a good tactical one /w my team mates. I do plenty of running. Once the tangos know your there you gotta get moving quickly (Dynamic). So in the intertests of moving as fast as is safe and doing proper B and CB entries (Bang & Breach Bang clear). I have my pinky jutted out to hold shift many times. B/C Usually I don’t run all the time, I try to sneak about unless I plan on being Dynamic. So that and using my pinky to make capital letters puts alot of strain on my, now couple that with Escape Meta Alt Control Shift (EMACS) style editing. When I use my pinky to deal with capslock (hate that key), shift, control, z, and Windows. It’s nice not to have to strain my fingers or wrists. I find using vim very comfortable for long edits. It’s also so dang effective that I can’t stand many other editors. Its like the speed and power of Vi/Vim ruins you for other editors once you learn it. I don’t claim to be no Vim Master or any thing but to me its gotta be the worlds greatest editor. Vi is in the top 10 in my book but Vim >= #1 xD

The only bad thinkg is some times I press # instead of $. The $ key moves to end of line in normal/visual modes. While the * and # keys searches forward and backwards for the word under the cursor. One thing I’m looking at is a C Refernce that can be ran in Vim, might help me write files on Win32 again. Usually I prefer BSD for doing C work because I can quickly look up a routine via the system manual. After all Unix was written in C and so is largly FreeBSD and I’d reckon most of GNU/Linux which is infact made up of many languages afaik.

PC-BSD Users Review

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Well, I thought it was about time I got around to doing this properly.

I’ve been using PC-BSD for approx. 10 Months so I’ve had enough time to see what life throws at me with it. My first install was 1.0 Release Candidate (RC) 1 and I currently run PC-BSD 1.2 (the current release) on my laptop and have a beta version of 1.3 installed on my desktop for testing. This will cover PC-BSD 1.2 and PC-BSD in general.

PC-BSD is primarily for desktops but makes a darn good laptop/workstation system. I won’t cover installation details as this is changing in future versions and often reviewed. My reviews sole interest is in a End User perspective (imho).

The Desktop. Well the default desktop on PC-BSD is pretty simple, it uses a program called “KDE” to put it simply to offer use a sweet system. The prepared setup is what most users should feel comfortable with, bottom bar with a applications menu and a few icons (personal files and web browser/file manager IIRC). A system tray and a clock, task bar in the bottom bar showing all running windows e.t.c. Trashcan and a few Icons on the desktop with (currently) a nice blue PC-BSD wall paper, in the old days there was a yellow field of flowers on a mountain top. For stuff a new user might not be familiar with let me explain some stuff. We have a simple applications or “K-Menu” that you click on the icon (the red one, bottom left corner.) and it presents the usual. Neatly grouped into catagories such as Games, Internet, Multimedia e.t.c This is a lot more logical then a certain other OS which tries to hide and poorly sort it’s start menu by default 😛

You should probably have a “House” like icon, clicking this opens Konqueror in file manager mode to your home directory. A home directory is a users personal space, by default you have folders such as Documents, Images, Music, e.t.c. You should have another icon next to this that when clicked should open Konqueror ether as a File Manager or a Web browser (it does both). You can think of Konqueror as the Windows/Internet Explorer and Finder/Safari of PC-BSD. It’s got a Mozilla Firefox feel to its web browsing but is not a Mozilla. Useful options for it include tabbed browsing (soon to hit Internet Explorer via Suggested Updates), spell checking, downloader, password/form manager, Google tool bar and quick Wikipedia lookups and more. In your system tray you should see a number of little icons. A clip board named “Klipper” that helps with cut, copy, and paste operations. You can cut (control+x), copy (control+c), and paste (control+v) like normal and you can highlight text with your mouse and press in the mouse wheel (button 3) to paste it without using your usual CC&P stuff -> And keep two things copied ! If you ever want to recall some thing you copied you can click on klipper and find it to use again quickly. It can also be cleared for privacy needs.

You will have a network applet giving status of your internet connection, you can open it give it the admin password and toy with your network settings if needed. The tool is borrowed from DesktopBSD and supports WEP crypto for Wifi users. (PC-BSD supports real crypto but not in the DBSD gui). Laptop users are least, a battery monitor, KOrganizer a nice Organizer program and possibly a volume control. A number of programs can be made to use or not use the system tray, so with things like Kopete (instant messenger) you can choose if you want a system tray icon or not. You might notice a little set of boxes around ether side of the panel. This is called a “Pager”, how it works is simple. If you open konqueror it is on the current “Virtual Desktop”, you click one of the boxes and your on another “Virtual Desktop”, you can open KMail and check your mail then click the first box again and go back to konqueror. Completely different sets of windows on different work spaces. For new computer users this is not some thing you need to care about but for “Multi-taskers” it rocks and rolls. Theres also some eye-candy replacements for the pager you can install. (I recommend kompose).

Configuring your desktop is pretty easy, right click on the desktop and click configure desktop. It’ll open a nice window to setup options such as: Desktop background (Wallpaper), which can be set to a different one for each virtual desktop. A number of expected options are available including the option of making your wallpaper change over time automatically (Slide show). On the behavior tab you can change how the desktop works. Things like what the mouse buttons do, device icons e.t.c. On the Multiple Desktops tab you can specify the number and names of the Virtual Desktops you want. I’ll have 2 to 4 depending on wall paper moods. Currently I run 3 Virtual Desktops. On the Screen saver tab you can set your screen saver and it’s settings. Clicking the Display tab lets you adjust your screen resolution, refresh rate, and monitor power saving scheme. Usually you should have 800×600 or 1024×768, on the PC-BSD beta I got about 1280×1024 out of the box. If you can’t select the res you want you will need to edit a settings file with the details of your monitor. (You can try to have it do auto-detection). You can click on the bottom bar or “Panel” to configure it as well as add extra “applets”, icons, more panels, external task bars, a kasbar (which would be more familiar to Windowmaker users) and all kinds of stuff – as well as configure your panel. I usually run my panel(s) transparent. Currently I have 3, a really small one lower left-hand for the K-Menu, a Konqueror profiles applet, and Seamonkey. One lower right hand for a system tray and one up top that is a “External task bar” that I have set to auto hide it self. By default you just get one panel across the bottom of the screen. If you click the little arrow on the edge you can hide/unhide it all together.

A lot more settings can be tuned from the control center under the K-Menu or there applets listed in the K-Menu under “Settings” including user management.

Ok lets talk turkey, uh software. What can we do out of the box with PC-BSD? Well lets have a look see. We have a number of games listed in Games-> Arcade, Board Games, Card Games, Tactics & Strategy, and one under Kids in the K-Menus games folder. Good fun for wasting time, I’ll let you decide what to play. My only complaint is no Chess or Centipede included out of the box :@ But for solitaire lovers there is kpatience which is like 20 different solitaire games in one, found in Games->Card Games on the K-Menu.

If you need some graphical software we can use Kolour Paint for simple art, KSnapshot for taking a screen shot of the desktop. As well as a bunch of image/file viewers including decent software for viewing .pdf and .ps files. I suggest Inkscape or Gimp for real work, see www.pbidir.com or ports.

For the Internet lover in all of us we have a lot of software. We have Akregator a RSS/Atom news reader – I like it and it exports/imports to OPML and XML. KGet download manager, a nice app if you need it which also has konqueror and system tray embedding options. KMail the default E-Mail client. It’s nothing special but it does have Pretty Good Privacy (Crypto) support built in afaik. Works ok but I prefer Seamonkies mail&newsgroups. It has import for *Mozilla/Netscape, Outlook Express, Evolution mailboxes and more. KNetAttach a Wizard for network resources. KNode a rock’n News reader (USENET or NNTP Newsgroup). I like it very much although I’ve yet to be able to find a decent news server. KPPP a GUI for dealing with Dial up. Best forget Dial up in this age IMHO but if it’s all you got… Ksirc a very simple, user friendly if not feature full IRC (Internet Relay Chat) Client. Konqueror a web browser and file manager with good standards compliance. Safari or Firefox users should feel homey with it (layout and UI respectively). Kopete a Instant Messaging Client that supports MSN, AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, SMS, Yahoo, and it’s own prototype protocol out of the box. You can be logged into multiple networks at once in one buddy window. I don’t care to much for the client, it feels more like traditional MSN/AOL/IMs in general. – I like Gaim which is like the new AOL AIM client but without the adds or bloat. Kopete is great for Joe user though. A few MSN clones are available on www.pbidir.com as of this writing called. One called aMSN is made to make MSN users feel at home in many ways. You also have Remote Desktop connection and sharing. You can even connect via VNC and RDP. On Windows XP Pro you can use RDP for desktop sharing but on Home and older systems you basically can only connect not share I think. KDE has two programs one to share one to connect. The X Windows System offers a limited form of this as well using it’s own technology.

For Multimedia work we have a few nice apps. Since various countries have laws and such you may as well go to www.pbidir.com, run a search for codecs & download the “Essential Codecs PBI” so you can watch encrypted DVDs and play MP3/WMV/WMA files and the like. We have KAduioCreator for CD Ripping. You will need to setup the encoders. I’ve never used it as I don’t really buy or download music often but you can setup most you will need. You have OggEnc (.ogg files), Lame (.mp3 files), and FLAC (.flac files). KMix for adjusting sound settings. KRec a recording tool, Kaffeine the standard media player. I personally find kaffeine a bit jumpy but in PC-BSD 1.3 it’s looking at better stability as it’s been upgraded but still not perfect. You can play DVD, .avi, .mkv, .wma,.wmv, .wav, .ogg, .flac, .mpg, .m4a, allot of stuff basically if you install the Codecs PBI. I personally prefer Amarok for music and MPlayer for video. You have KsCD a Analog CD Player – if you can’t use this it’s because your computer does not have the cable between CD-ROM and Sound card for analog playback, use kaffine instead. I think KsCD will be dropped soon ! Theres a few more stuff here but it’s not important. There is also MPlayer for the advanced Move Player in all of us. The new All Codecs PBI works with MPlayer unlike the Essential Codecs PBI and should be able to replace Essential Codecs. If you uninstall the Essential Codecs you’ll have to change settings in Kaffeine to play *WMV files. In 1.2 MPlayer was poorly compiled and doesn’t have GUI support but in the 1.3Beta it’s done right (includes gui support). I recommend the Amarok and VLC PBIs as well as the codecs:)

For Office users we have basically a few good apps including Kontact which combines a number of programs into a single personal information manager. From it you can use the supplied E-Mail, Notes, Newsgroups reader, RSS/Atom news reader, To-Do Lists, Organizer, Alarm clock, Address book, and theres even a few tools for Palm pilot people, I don’t own a PDA that advanced so I can’t help you there brother. If you want some solid office work go to www.pbidir.com and look in the office category. You can find word processors, spread sheets e.t.c. There is also the OpenOffice.org and KOffice office suites that each give you a full featured office suite. I love MS Word as much as the next person but I prefer OpenOffice to the other options. Especially since Open and K Office are Free and Open Source where most Office suites are closed source and cost ALOT. OO.o gives a word proc, spread sheet, database, image, formulas, and presentation program at least. KOffice gives you the mother load.

A number of basic utils are around including. KSysGuard a task manager, KInfoCenter a detailed system information tool, KNotes sticky notes for your desktop (I love this app), KJots out liner, KCron task scheduler, Disk Usage, Floppy formatter, and a removable media util. USB, CD/DVD disks should auto-mount with a pop-up asking what to do (usually).

We have a bunch of accessibility tools which I hope will be expanded in future releases. For utils and candy – We’ve got KCalc the most important item (a calculator), SuperKaramba desktop widgets which might be familer to Mac OS X users more so. You can have little applets on your desktop like system monitors or Media player controls e.t.c. You’ve got KPGP a crypto tool and shedder (hoozah), Groupware Wizard, Alarm program, news ticker and a few other apps. Theres an Archiving tool named “ark” that will handle compressed archives. It can handle Gzip, BZip2, Zip, Tar, LHA, LZopped, BZip, Debian pkg, AR Archive (.a), and with support tools added via PBI or ports 7z and RAR files, Users of OLD versions of PC-BSD had to install support for .ZIP but now it’s included. You’ll still need 7Zip and RAR from www.pbidir.com though 😀

Most people should be familiar with .Zip no matter what OS your used to. I reccomend using GZip which gives .tgz or .tar.tgz files depending on how you use it. For when your making a compressed file on PC-BSD. Use the .zip for sharing with Windows users. Bzip2 (.bz2, .tar.bz2) or 7Zip (.7z) is nice if you need smaller files too. Unix likes are a bit different about this then just Zipp’ing it and that warrants an article on it’s own. I just suggest Zip and GZip formats depending on your needs.

For the most important programs we have the Text Editors. KEdit, KWrite, and Kate. KEdit is a very simple editor, think of it like Notepad. It’s ok for quick edits and supports some basic key combos. KWrite is a more powerful editor and what I recommend. It has syntax highlighting which makes life easier when you edit a config file or if your writing HTML or a script e.t.c. I think you can also do spell checking IIRC. My favorite is Kate, you could say it’s the Midnight Commander of editors. It has a small file browser, terminal, and embedded KWrite editor in one window. It’s very good for writing console software and it’s geared towards programmers. It uses KWrite for editing afaik but with more just for programming 🙂

Kate is very nice and is more configurable then KWrite or KEdit. Also last but not least you have the humble “Konsole” a Terminal Emulator like cmd.exe or XTerm. It’s very nice and supports tabs, my favorite way to use the command line. CLI Warriors and GNU/Linux/BSD/Unix avids will find a Bourne style shell as sh, the Tenix C-Shell (tcsh), and he Bourne Again Shell (bash) installed. The “sh” is based on ash not linked to bash so be careful when scripting.

I find that PC-BSD is very configurable and allots me a lot of freedom without me having to break it’s arm. A lot of the software is Free and Open Source (two different things). Theres a few commercial apps that come as PBI as well. Underneath PC-BSD you have a full FreeBSD 6.1-Release (as of this writing) system. You can do every thing with it you can on PC-BSD but keep aware that PC-BSD add ins are centered around KDE/QT. So if your heart is set on running GNOME your likely to run into problems here and there. In my humble opinion the weakest point for PC-BSD is multimedia. Generally you can play any thing but some times it can be a little bit of a hassle if you don’t like Kaffine and Realplayer (see www.pbidir.com or ports). The biggest issue is that it’s currently limited to flashplayer7 which only works in Konqueror. For some reason it crashes all other browsers. Some people have had better luck using ports but I don’t like flash content very much so I have not toyed with it. As GNU/Linux gets flashplayer9 support so will we soon. After all you can run GNU/Linux binaries on *BSD hehehehehehe.

I’ve found you oh most never need to use the command line but it does make life easier. It’s so much more powerful then DOS based stuff it rocks. Usually you can do a lot of “hand tweaking” by editing files, this is also how a lot of special operating system oriented changes are done (system admin stuff). Yet most programs you can modify it by text files as well if you wish. Some times you can access settings not tunable from the GUI 🙂

There is full access to PBI, FreeBSD ports, packages, and even GNU/Linux RPMs via a Linux Compatibility loader but that means dealing with GNU/Linux Redheaded Pest Management (RPM) or installing other GNU/Linux packmans by hand. You will find approx 16,000 programs available for PC-BSD right now and many GNU/Linux applications. The stock of PBI are picking up as well but still are very few in comparison.

What about security? Well we have 3 professional grade firewalls included, they are a little bit involved to setup but heck if it’s good enough for Yahoo’s security it should be ok on a desktop <_> In the next release or the one after we should be getting an easy way to configure the OpenBSD firewall “pf”, the foundation of which I feel has been laid in the 1.3 Beta1 installers advanced mode.

The system follows the old school approach to user security. The core concepts dates back to like MULTICS in the late 1960s for Multi-User systems – they still are as useful today as they where then. By multi-user I mean any computer used by more then one person. If your the only user of it, user management is only as much concern as what you have on the system. You see back in the days when a Computer cost so much no one could own one. You had to be like a University or IBM to have one. So time was very valuable and one computer had to serve many users. Once a true “Multi-User” oriented systems came about instead of the limit of one user at a time, computers could have many users using them at once. PC-BSD supports this as well in modern style. You could actually have 10 people working via a Remote Desktop or Secure Shell (or both) setup on 1 box + some one sitting on it while the others are logged in via the network. To be honest outside of business use, all this matters to use is the concepts that makes the system inherently more secure by default practice.

Every person has a user “account” to log on with, preferably with a password. You can use a blank password but it defeats the purpose of security -> Any one can then use the account. The account should consist of your login name and password. Your first name or your initials are good choices for a account name. Passwords should be 6 to 10 characters and contain more then numbers or letters. Because of internationalization you can only use letters and numbers in the installer but you can change it to any thing you want after boot up. Ever user has a group, a group is like a department. At a small business you might groups like accounting, clerks, billing, e.t.c. Every file is owned by both a user and a group and has certain permissions for three kinds of users. Permissions for the owning user, the owning group, and permissions for every body else. You can be a member of any number of groups. Permissions are for Read, Write, and Execute. So you can control who can do what with your files. A good example:

User           Group
Joe            Joe
Jane           Jane
Tim            Tim, Joe

If Joe wants Tim to be able to edit one of his documents he can set the file permissions to allow members of his group Read and Write access. So if the file “Tax Returns.doc” was owned by Joe of group Joe. With permissions Read&Write for Joe User, and Read&Write for Joe Group, and Read Only for every body else. Tim could edit the file because he is a member of Joes group. Thats the basic thing about it, it’s really very easy to set up such things if you own the file. PC-BSD uses FreeBSD underneath so you have support for Mandatory Access Controls if you want to set those up.

Every user account has it’s own folder called a “Home Directory” for there personal files, for the most part you can’t delete or edit any thing outside this directory from your user account. So no worries about some one trying to delete part of the Operating System or installing some program globally without a heck of a good fight 😀

What if you want to do some thing like edit a configuration file? For that there is a special account called “root” or the super user account. This account is like the GOD account. As root you have unlimited power over the system – even files root does not own. This is why the root account is used for admin work, changing special settings for the OS, installing software e.t.c. You can create more if you want or make yourself a super user. It’s not worth it unless your prepared to risk screwbing up the box though. ^_^ You can switch user to root in the command line at any time if you belong to the group “wheel”. I don’t know why they call it that, you could change it if you really want as the computer only sees User ID and Group ID numbers (which you can set/change/view too). If you want to run a program as root, you can type “kdesu appname” into the run dialog (wihout quotes). Logging into the Desktop as root directly even over the network is disabled by default. You can allow this if you want to reduce security. PC-BSD is not the worlds most secure OS, OpenBSD is but it tries to make it reasonably secure for every one. You can make it as insecure as you want if that rocks you boat…

Using the “root” account directly is just like running as an Administrator on Windows XP only you never need to do so directly. When you try to reach an option menu only root can or install a PBI. The system will ask you for the root password in order to launch the program or applet. You can even have it remember the password if your lazy. For day to day work you shouldn’t need to care about this, it’s when you do some thing only the person who owns the computer should allow done or in the case of business the guy/gal who is responsible for every bodies computers at work. I use PC-BSD daily and usually don’t need to use a password after I’ve logged in unless I want to install software. It makes e feel better that malicious stuff can screw up my files easy enough if I let it but can’t delete my operating system so easy. Don’t even have to worry about your employees installing Doom behind your back if they are not admin and few have need to be. Nore do I have to put up with other people being able to edit my files out of the box unless they have my permission 😀

Pros:
It’s free
It’s Open Source under a BSD Style license
It’s a custom FreeBSD system not a Fork.
It’s Easy to use and intends to be
A lot of good software is available at no cost
Extremely limited Virus or Spy ware threats. (Currently)
Can run most GNU/Linux software (not tied into the kernel, i.e. drivers)
C/C++/Perl/Python developers should feel at home, QT/X11 Open Source Edition included.
Many languages and developer tools available.
Updates are easy (PBI) and full access to FreeBSD methods.
Solid update path between releases (no BETAs !)
It’s stable and has good reliability
Low total cost of ownership
Custom kernel builds for better Desktop use (Video support, PF, e.t.c.)
Includes a kernel build for Single Processor and SMP systems (Multi-processor and Dual Core machines).
Free Community tech support
PBI makes installing some software quick, easy, and painless
Most common desktop software needs met out of the box or with ease
Has a KDE based Desktop and Integration
A lot of information available online.
Can dual boot with many other OSes.
Java Runtime and SDK can be installed with a few mouse clicks
nVidia wants FreeBSD to have good drivers and PC-BSD makes installing them a snap.
Runs pretty well with a 500Mhz Pentium 3 and 384MB of Memory.
The FreeBSD handbook is very good for a lot of things
Can be good for Laptops/Desktops/Workstations, possibly small business file servers.

Cons:
It sucks for DirectX (Win) Gaming.
Getting a working flashplayer can be sticky (for now) this is a pro imho hehee.
May not support all hardware
Supports newer hardware slower then Linux.
Support for many popular multimedia formats require a easy install package.
Limited support for Windows software (via WINE) -> very crappy imho for any thing major
Wireless support takes some additional configuration right now, easy setup is limited to WEP – full support via conventional methods as of PC-BSDv1.2.
Professional phone support costs money.
PBI installed programs cannot interface with traditional FreeBSD ports/packages most times
Most “Special needs”, Shareware, and Mal ware softwares do not support GNU/Linux, *BSD, or Mac OS X.
Poor integration if Gnome desktop is wished (not fun to do, curse the Gnome heads for it though)
Most businesses only offer Wintel support (see below)
Uninstalling Windows or Mac OS will probably void your vendors warranty.
Included boot loader is poor for multi-hard drive setups (use GAG or GRUB)
Does not support VisualBasic or natively Microsoft/Apple extensions to languages
Don’t even think about DirectX…
Cannot run as a 64-Bit OS (but supports the 64-Bit CPUs in 32-Bit mode)
Intel graphics cards are poorly supported (but thats true any where !)
Does not support _very_ old CPU architectures(< i686). Such as AMD K6, Intel 80486, 80386, or 80286s. Needs at least 384~512MB of DDR Memory or 256+ MB of DDR2 memory to run fast enough for me. The FreeBSD handbook only covers traditional FreeBSD methods. PC-BSD website
The PBI Directory
PC-BSD Forums

More Unix basics are not within the scope of this review and are for another Blog entry.

If any one actually reads this, feel free to drop a comment or a question about PC-BSD or visit the PC-BSD support forums.

What better place to write a review of some thing then on my Blog 
                       ^^<(^^__^^)>^^

As for parting words I’ve just got to say 🙂

We don’t have any Blue Screens of Death, we have a Blue Wallpaper !

Stable, Free, Open, Powerful, Functional, Secure, Easy, Customizable -> PC-BSD is fun muahuahuah.

Edit — as of 2008-09-09, comments have been closed. It’s been ~two years and I’m tired of managing spam-bots.

Vi, Macs, and Shells

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I’ve so got to get or make a Vim plug in or some thing for this.

So far I’ve come to a cross roads, I can keep my editor or I can become more Emacs compatible. On Windows I use PuTTY for a ssh client. I don’t know what the terminal emulator is but it sucks. When working on Vectra I effectively have no insert/home keys e.t.c. or Numpad which is bad because I’m accustomed to using the home and end keys in my line editing. This means ether live with only cursor keys and backspace for line editing or relearn the Emacs navigation commands. Control+key is used, b for back one char, f for forward one char. p for previous command (up) and N for Next command (down). e for end of line while a is used for end and home key replacements. Using the meta key (generally alt) turns this up a notch and uses larger units such as forward a word instead of a char. I’m used to using control+u and control+w in line editing – I don’t know if control+w has effect in Emacs but control+u doesn’t.

Needless to say I don’t like Emacs ! I used XEmacs as my editor at first but I fell in love with Vim after I started getting into shell use. You could say learning the shell helped me learn Vim and vice versa. I didn’t like vim at first and I’m only now starting to use gvim off windows (konsole is better then cmd.exe). I’m very used to Vim so I am also used to Vi. My vimrc file makes it easier to use but since Vectra is very light on the software I didn’t install vim. Vi is good enough and ee for when I’m just pissed.

Vim/Vi is very simple to use once you get the hang of it, Emacs is just wrist strain. So now I ask my self the question: What about Vi editing mode? The Bourne and Korn shells support it as does the Z shell AFAIK. However I use tcsh which does not. So if I want to use this editing mode that means use another shell. Vectra only has sh and tcsh. Being FreeBSD the csh is actually tcsh but not like how bash is commonly GNU/Linuxes sh. FreeBSD uses ash as s, a very light Bourne shell clone. I could install any other shell I want really and a ruby shell would be kind of cool if it could fuse an interactive shell, scripting and ruby into one package. The problem is if I get used to vi line editing in a shell I’ll be ruined for any other shell !. I’ve yet to decide but to be honest with the Vi editing mode I think sh is livable. It nets the use of cursor keys and command history.

nvi/Vim is very simple. Vi is a modal editor, if you press escape you are in a command mode, if you press “i” or insert you are in insert mode and it’s like most text editors. You litterly change the entire keyboard into/out of modes. In insert mode your keys always insert chars, most consoles let you use the arrow keys, home/end/delete/backspace like normal. In normal mode which can be reached by pressing escape. Every key stroke is a command or switches to other modes. You can move the cursor with the h,j,k,and l keys. The h and l keys move left and right while the j and k keys move down and up. I’ve heard that Bill Joys console had arrow keys on these so that’s probably why they are used this way. It was a little weird at first but now I’m getting used to it. I’ve generally used the cursors.You can delete a char using the “x” key.

You can delete directionally by prefixing a movement key with d. So dh and dl deletes one char to the left or right. Pressing dj or dk will delete the current line and the line below or above. To kill the whole line use dd. You can repeat commands by appending a number, example: dd3 will delete 3 lines. You can move to the start or end of line by pressing ^ and $ this also works with d. You might notice ^ and $ from some studies in regular expressions – I do from a bit of sed/grep/awk learning. You can move forward and back a word at a time with the w and b keys. Much faster then control+key combo and easier on the wrists IMHO! Pressing i puts you into insert mode to enter text, pressing v puts you in visual mode. Escape will bring you back to normal mode. I never used visual mode very much at first but now I find it useful. In visual mode most normal mode commands for movement work the same. Yet when you move the cursor you always highlight or “select” text. You can copy it or “yank” it with the y command and put or “paste” it with the p command. If you want to cut it use the c command. Usually after a cut I think Vim puts you in insert. Pressing : gives you a little command line.

Here you can enter commands but internal and external, set options and more. To edit a file type e /file/name after pressing : for speed I bound ; to do the same as : in my vimrc. To save it’s :w also know as write ! To quit it’s :q note that you press the ” : ” you don’t type it as part of the command. You can override it by suffixing it with a !. Example: force a quit by doing a :q!

We can run shell commands by prefixing them with a “!” like this :!ls ~/Documents. File name completion works and a UNIX shell is better at it then cmd.exe (vim is very portable). Vim might seem a bit awkward at first but once your used to it it’s very fast and effeienct. TO get help type :help to get context sensitive help try :help topic_or_cmd

Using vi line editing in a shell works the same was using Vi only you start off in insert mode instead of normal mode. I haven’t decided what to do yet.

Ya know whats funny…. I started out to write a short post about my feelings but I end up trying to knock out a Vi/Vim intro before my batteries run out.

All roads lead to Vi !!!

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I’ve been fooling with ntpd allot, if I’d stop editing the file maybe I could be sure of my configurations hehe. I keep the below blog entry fairly up to date.

Installed the PC-BSD 1.3BETA1 on my desktop heres a copy of the notes I wrote myself before posting on PC-BSD.

Notes:

First installer screen needs to say KDE is a DE not a WM, it will confuse people.

Installer didn’t allow an option toggle autologin.

Glad to see installer says PC-BSD not FreeBSD in the ASCII art and boot menu which is also used now at boot up. < I never did a 1.2 install so I wouldn't know if this is new or not. Installer detected my SATAII (ad0) drive and some free USB ports (da0-3). Drive layout was 180GB NTFS (WinXP), 79GB Ext3 (Ubuntu), 120+GB Freespace, Extended partition /w 4 logical drives (linux swap, home, and backups) Partitions detected right, NTFS, EXT3, DOS Extended. -> Didn’t detected my freespace ! Rebooted and manually fdisked me a UFS2 slice to use.

Installer doesn’t make it clear in the adv. Setup if PF will (if it needs to) be configured accordingly if you choose to use NTPD.

Installer could use tooltips.

Using the quick guide pressing “Index” in pages sends you to /PCBSD/docs/guide/ on the FS not /PCBSD/docs/guide/index.html (Time for a sed script)

Icon setup is great opens the right profiles to, only the “Start” Menu should be named some thing less Windows like and more consistant with the documentation that refers to it as a “K-Menu” -> We don’t need confused people saying “Whats a K-Menu” and it’s probably patented by Microsoft or Apple.

The pictures in the quick guide do not match the window decore, K-Menu, or Panel of the actual system

~/looks good, although some sample images and/or a PC-BSD_theme_song.ogg would be nice as would be a Video interview with the dev’s talking about the system. All in the right dirs of course.

There should be a fairly consistant (simular) rc file for each shell. (sh, csh/tcsh, bash). It should at least set the same basic env vars and the prompt.

/etc has a few .bak files and shells only shows bash by it’s symlink in /bin not both /bin and /usr/local/bin.

The “Start” menu looks nice but is a bit scrungy looking, the PC-BSD side img that used to be used /was/ nice tho

nice to see GTK 1.2 and 2.8 installed along with gtkglarea and python bindings. gtk-qt-engine+ Control Center entry -> Nice !

Noticed the new style lipstik used, PCBSD style should be renamed PCBSD Classic or v1.2 or something. I like what you’ve done with the Crystal windecore, think I might clone it to my lappy next time I change my windecore.

I wish KDE would fix the Component Chooser. (installed version is 3.5.4)

ruby, portaudit, portupgrade are installed among the 255 pkg’s (including a pair for the KDE style/windecore).

I see ispell is setup in KDE but pkg_info | grep spell only returns aspell dunno if thats right or not.

I get a default resolution of 1280×1024 just like in Ubuntu, I call it the “livable” res since I prefer 1600×1200 or larger + large fonts xD

Would be nice if NUMLOCK was turned on automaticly when booting a Desktop. It’s kinda expected.

Printers section gives an error

root has a pair of msg from june and the MOTD is still FreeBSD

PCBSDv1.3 conf still references itself ontop as the GENERIC FreeBSD conf. It’s set for machine i386 and cpu’s 486-686.

There is no sound drivers being loaded in my loader.conf. Usually FreeBSDs OSS doesn’t notice my audigy4 and I have to install the emu10kx driver. On Ubuntu ALSA can use it with the included standard driver (emu10k1 I think, or maybe emu10k3).

paths should be set to automatically have the users “Documents path” set to /usr/home/${USER}/Documents since you give them a dir for it.

There are no help items for the PC-BSD related Control Center entries. This is more a standard policy imho for PC-BSD. Want help? Get GNOME, want functionality? Get KDE !

I think the menu editor might be fixed finally !!!

Launching KDE reports it can’t find the codecs or libdvdcss since they are in the Essential Codecs PBI.

It also reports “DVD Drive” Can’t check DMA mode. Permission denied or no such device: “/dev/dvd”

I hope 0.8.2 fixes the stability problems in 0.8.1 (PC-BSD v1.2)

The X config file is XF86Config but we still use Xorg 6.9

Some interesting changes in /PCBSD/cardDetect which appear to come from RoFreeSBIE

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Really I think they are making an improvement, I just don’t care for what they have done with the K-Menu. Also for some odd reason Keramilk, crystal, and polyester window decore keeps coming back to me.