A final push against TPP

I'm sure many of you know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam have been working on for almost 10 years.  Well, they have recently been trying harder than ever to get it passed, but thanks to over 3 million people speaking out against it so far they have agreed to meet with OpenMedia, an international nonprofit that fights for internet rights and freedoms.

OpenMedia are making a final push to get an online petition and feedback from people to help guide them at these meetings with the TPP people.  You don't need to live in one of the nations above to sign the online petition and share your thoughts.  The link is below.

OpenMedia - Face to Face with Internet Censorship


The TPP will increase internet censorship and decrease privacy, so have your say while they're listening.

Tackling BSD

Before I head off in a couple weeks, I wanted to deal with a question I tend to get every 3-4 months.  The question is why don't I write a BSD guide, or can I help them install BSD from scratch.

These questions are a bit ridiculous, since that is not at all how one should approach BSD for the first time.  It is the type of thing that you read a book about before you even attempt using it.  There are BSD install guides out there, but that won't teach you most of the fundamentals you'll need to get by.  The main problem with install guides is that you don't really grasp what you're doing.  You're really just going through the motions that someone else figured out for you.  You can approach Linux like this in limited ways, but not BSD.

If you really want an install guide then use the ones on the BSD sites, but I won't be linking to any, since I cannot promote that way of learning if you're coming to the table with a totally blank BSD slate.  Instead, I will link to BSD books you should read first.

BSD is actually less user accessible than Linux, and that is saying something.  You need to use it to truly understand that.  It's not that it gets in your way, but more that it's just on another level.  BSD is the closest modern remnant to true UNIX.  Linux on the other hand is a UNIX-like OS, but in an off on its own sense; which means it's based on many of the same concepts and ideals, but not the same code or direction.  BSD is also technically UNIX-like, as it's not the original AT&T version, but it is the truest form of UNIX today.  The most proper thing to call BSD is a UNIX clone.  GNU/Linux was designed by largely UNIX people to be more user accessible, and include features those developers couldn't get into UNIX at the time; for whatever reasons.  GNU literally stands for GNU's Not UNIX.

These days things are a lot more open in the UNIX/BSD world, and there are multiple BSD variants that have been released in the last couple decades, but it's still BSD; the Everest of operating systems.

This is not an OS for the lighthearted user.  You've been warned.

A good list of BSD/UNIX books to read can be found here.  The list is a bit OpenBSD dominant, but that is my BSD of choice.  The next closest thing would be NetBSD. 

Hello from Houston

Hello everyone! I am very happy to be with you all. As you may already know, my name is Mark Elliott and I am going to be filling in for Zen while he is working abroad in Europe. I am very honored that Zen asked me to fill in for him. I have been a long time reader of PowerPC Liberation. Zen has been the driving force in motivating me to learn and use Debian. I am truly a better user and technician because of him. When he asked me to join the liberation the only natural answer was yes!

I do have some plans for a project involving my PowerMac G4 that I will be posting about here. My Power Mac is an upgraded Quicksilver. It has a 1.33ghz OWC Mercury Extreme CPU, a flashed Radeon 9800 pro and a PCI SATA controller with two drives attached. I have always wondered if I could improve the internal airflow by adding fans and possibly changing the existing fans with modern ones. I would like to keep the temperatures as low as possible while keeping fan noise at bearable levels. While experimenting I will use these thermometers to collect live data from various points inside of the case. This way we would have hard data to see if any changes made to the fans are helpful or detrimental.

I am absolutely thrilled to be here with you guys, it is going to be fun! If everyone would please join me in wishing Zen a safe, fun and productive trip to Europe.