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Gemlog
The Neunix Gemlog is all about tech. Its articles cover mostly software-related topics (a lot of *BSD, a bit of illumos and some Linux) as well as everything else about the IT that I find time and motivation to write about. Focus is on FreeBSD as that is my daily driver OS but I try to touch on a lot of interesting things.
(December 2021) Cross-platform package building: Pkgsrc vs. Ravenports (2/2)
The second part of this article features a short introduction of Pkgsrc and Ravenports before discussing how they compare. The scenario is covered as well as the results and a conclusion.
(November 2021) Cross-platform package building: Pkgsrc vs. Ravenports (1/2)
This article introduces the reader to some of the troubles of cross-platform package management. It also briefly covers strategies to solve the problems that come with it.
(June 2021) Advance!BSD - thoughts on a not-for-profit project to support *BSD (2/2)
The second part of this article is about the "what" and the "how" of the project.
(June 2021) Advance!BSD - thoughts on a not-for-profit project to support *BSD (1/2)
The first part of the article introduces the Advance!BSD project and discusses a bit of background as well as the "why".
(June 2021) FreeBSD package building pt. 5: Sophisticated Synth
This article is about signing package repositories, make.conf for port options, profiles and using Synth with cron.
(June 2021) FreeBSD package building pt. 4: (Slightly) Advanced Synth
This article is about Synth's web reports, package sets and serving repositories. We're taking a look at build problems, too.
(June 2021) FreeBSD package building pt. 3: Intermediate Synth
This article covers Synth's configuration, using the compiler cache and upgrading the system.
(May 2021) FreeBSD package building pt. 2: Basic Synth
This article is an introduction to Synth in general. It also shows how to install it and get it building packages. What the various things involved mean and how to deal with repositories is discussed as well.
(May 2021) FreeBSD package building pt. 1: Introduction and test system
This article discusses the theory of package building: When to do it and which way? What program to use in which case? And how to work with ports after FreeBSD migrated to Git? It also includes the setup for a test system that will be used for demonstrating package building and system updating in the next post(s).
(May 2021) FreeBSD router take 2 (pt. 4): Demoting my ISP's router
This article is about using a DSL modem together with OPNsense to replace my ISP's router (except for telephony). It shows how to configure both.
(May 2021) FreeBSD router take 2 (pt. 3): De-hardening OPNsense for 2022? (excursion)
Where the previous article discussed the parts where FreeBSD shines when it comes to security, this one is about the bad parts. It also looks at why HardenedBSD is important, why OPNsense leaving it behind still arguably makes sense and why OpenBSD is not an option.
(April 2021) FreeBSD router take 2 (pt. 2): FreeBSD and security (excursion)
This article discusses what I think security means in today's world - and how FreeBSD performs security-wise.
(April 2021) FreeBSD router take 2 (pt. 1): OPNsense ZFS-based installation (by converting FreeBSD)
In this first post of my new series, I show how to install OPNsense as a root-on-ZFS system by setting up a FreeBSD system first and then converting that.
(April 2021) Women... in tech?! (And elsewhere)
After having been accused of only caring about men's interests, in this article I explain my stance towards women: I'm not indifferent to the very real problems they are facing in society. Here's why and some proposals that I make.
(March 2021) Cancelling Richard Stallman?
This post is one that I didn't think I'd ever write: I'm defending Stallman against defamation by "cancel culture" activists. I also write about the dangers of such movements for today's society.
(Feb 2021) Re-learning to type... again! (From Neo to Bone)
After using an ergonomical keyboard layout for more than half a decade, I felt that I might try something new. My old layout (Neo) works great, but after learning of a newer variant (Bone), I wanted to try it out - and am fascinated by what the human brain is capable of doing.
(Feb 2021) Multi-OS PXE-booting from FreeBSD 12: Linux, illumos and more (pt. 4)
The mini series ends with examples for adding various Linux and illumos distributions as options to the PXE server. A couple of other Open Source operating systems are also covered.
(Feb 2021) Multi-OS PXE-booting from FreeBSD 12: PXE menu and *BSD (pt. 3)
Part 3 of the series covers preparing and configuring the NBP and menu (including optional submenus). It also shows how to prepare our machine for serving working installations of all the major BSDs - with the exception for DragonFly BSD that I could not get working without using NFS.
(Jan 2021) Multi-OS PXE-booting from FreeBSD 12: Required services (pt. 2)
In part 2 the actual services required for PXE booting are set up. Two options are described for both of the third-party services used (DHCP server and File Server) so the reader can pick from them.
(Jan 2021) Multi-OS PXE-booting from FreeBSD 12: Introduction (pt. 1)
Part 1 of this mini-series explains why you might want a multi-OS PXE server on FreeBSD, includes an excursion about what PXE is in short and shows how I prepared a test machine to be a gateway and nameserver.
(Jan 2021) Dystopian Open Source
This post is about a phenomenon in Open Source that could be described as hostility towards contributions from "less important" projects. Some of that is due to ignorance by a certain type of developers and some due to increasing corporate influence on Open Source. It's high time to realize the dangers in this and oppose the wrong direction things are currently heading!
(Dec 2020) CentOS killed by IBM - a chance to go new ways?
This article is about what "enterprise" means in software and how a bit of BSD thinking (base system and package separation) could open up interesting possibilities for a stable Linux distribution to be created.
(Oct 2020) My first FreeBSD port: Castor
This post talks about Castor being my first committed FreeBSD port. I also describes the current version of Castor a little and presents some ideas on new features that I'd like to see.
I've decided to take some of the old articles from my former Weblog and make them available on Gemini as well. As a bonus you'll get to read slightly improved versions.
After the exceptional 2018, year 8 of my blogging activities fell just slightly short of the great year 2017. I wrote Articles about FreeBSD on ARM hardware, using FreeBSD ports with tools, a series on various operating systems on ULTRA SPARC hardware and my first series on programming (daemonization on FreeBSD with Python). Single posts include a rant against GPL supremacy, one more article about Ravenports and a return to OmniOSce among other things.
Year seven of my blogging activity meant the pinnacle of Eerie Linux: While I published less posts than one year before, the page hits further increased after an already incredibly good year 2017. In the end over 25,700 visitors caused more than _46,700_ hits! I published two controversial articles about permissive licenses vs. copyleft and FreeBSD's adoption of a feminist COC. A series on email did not receive much attention and I got distracted after writing part 2. What distracted me was a new cross-platform package system: Ravenports. I wrote multiple articles about it. That year also saw me getting into Solaris land for the first time, taking a look at OpenSolaris derivative OmniOS.
Over year six my visitor count skyrocketed: In all years except the first one, my blog had had around 7,000 page hits. 2017 saw over _32,000_. This was due to two series of articles that were very well received: One about an experiment of exploring and updating an ancient FreeBSD 4.11 system and one about building your own little home router. With 8 posts straight, the latter was also my longest up to this point. I also wrote about jails as well as package management and ports on FreeBSD and a couple of other things.
Year five of my blogging career meant writing about various topics such as compression and version control. I did not deliberately choose BSD-related topics, but my interest in these systems simply never vanished after I had started exploring them. And so 2016 saw me getting deeper with articles on dual-booting, an overview of the four major BSD systems as well as Vagrant and Bacula on FreeBSD. It was an interesting time when I also wrote about comparing Linux and BSD: Regarding documentation differences in one article and eventually in general. The year ended with a well received article about using TrueOS as a daily driver for 3 months.
My fourth blogging year started out with posts about touch-typing, but then I completely went down the BSD route. OpenBSD at first, then mostly FreeBSD. The year ends with some thoughts about a game studio giving away the Linux version of their game for free.
The beginning of my third blogging year was dedicated mostly to the E5 distribution experiment. After that follows articles on various topics: Licenses, RISC-V hardware, the incident known as "shell shock" and more on the light-weight side of Linux. I also published my first kind of "political" article despite never wanting to do that on a tech blog - but when there's danger to the freedom on the net I surely had to make a stand for sanity, didn't I?
In my second blogging year I mostly continued with more preparation for building my experimental Linux distro: A lot of applications that use various toolkits were tested and reviewed (I did not bring those posts over, though). Other than that I begun to be interested in the broader *nix family, peeking at some non-Linux operating systems and finally got my hands dirty digging into Linux systems and then beginning to build my own.
My first blogging year (or actually half year since I started in the second half of 2012): I'm writing about the Linux distribution experiment that I had in mind and evaluate available software to find good light-weight components to pick for the distro.