Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Open Source, Unix
FreeSBIE 2.0 - FreeBSD live CD hits major milestone
Released on January 15th, FreeSBIE 2.0 is a FreeBSD live CD for those looking to experience FreeBSD without making any commitment. Version 2.0, based on FreeBSD 6.2, is the result of almost 2 years of work by the FreeSBIE team (the last release was Dec 6th, 2004). FreeSBIE includes many popular desktop packages such as Gaim, Firefox 1.5, AbiWord, The Gimp and others (including MP3-playback codecs). I like that it also includes Wireshark and NmapFE, both handy tools for troubleshooting network issues and anomalies.
By default it features Xfce as its desktop environment and alternately Fluxbox. Both are not as popular as the obvious picks Gnome or KDE, but both are perfectly usable and are a nice change of pace. If you decide to do some actual work you can save and restore it from FAT32, UFS2 (Unix File System), ext2 (Linux) or ReiserFS disks or "slices" (partitions), including USB thumb drives - just use the mountdisks cheatcode at boot.
While not as mature as comparable Linux live CDs, FreeSBIE 2.0 is a big milestone for the team and good step forward for the project. If you are curious about the Unix-world beyond Linux, FreeSBIE is a great and easy way to get a feel for FreeBSD.
[Thanks, Dolores!]
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
