commit 088e997dd12c561ee0ccc354f8f02a255225fe39 from: Roman Zolotarev date: Wed Dec 11 16:26:14 2019 UTC remove sehnsucht commit - b221c6d88e6cd1e1ea1fdef8b5e60a03c012e334 commit + 088e997dd12c561ee0ccc354f8f02a255225fe39 blob - 88a52085e7fcdbe7ee3cdc193de79e7aa226bf0e blob + 770f329a08f9ce5fdb1d957317ba0b3f31e9f156 --- people/index.html +++ people/index.html @@ -38,7 +38,6 @@ with your display name and avatar.

- blob - d5bbd277f22185cba58fc271c4b109e9315644c6 (mode 644) blob + /dev/null Binary files people/sehnsucht.jpeg and /dev/null differ blob - 83af950583c9f84823ade29f72a68dff41f148a3 (mode 644) blob + /dev/null --- people/sehnsucht.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,234 +0,0 @@ -

- -# Sehnsucht runs BSD - -I'm 24-years-old Italian Medicine student and apprentice (6th year -at Sapienza University of Rome), free-time Unix and retro-computing/gaming -passionate. My other interests include philosophy, rock and classical -music, inline-hockey/skating, skiing, mountain biking, black & white -movies and seinen manga. - -I've been a computer geek practically since I have memory. Living -in the country-side and lacking easy means of transport I was often -held back from playing with other kids and this resulted in me -spending a significant portion of my time playing 15/18+ games -(Doom, UT, Shadow Warrior, Daggerfall, Max Payne) and hacking around -on computers. I recently came to the conclusion that most people -of my age first came in contact with computer software either through -Windows XP or OS X Leopard; this results in them not being comfortable -with command line and expecting the computer to automatically do -things for them. That's neither bad or unfortunate, it's just a -matter of fact. Yet, my story went a little bit different, and I -think it gave me the chance to learn a lot while having tons of -fun. - -My family got its first PC in '98, second-handed and practically -for free, thanks to my uncle performing a hardware upgrade towards -P6 Pentium and letting us take his 1993 IBM PS/1 (486SX, 6MB RAM, -512MB IDE HDD, currently sold for parts), which used to come with -PC-DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1. My uncle taught me the basic commands -to type in order to launch games. As a 5 years old and curious kid, -whose favourite toy up to that moment had been a fake laptop, I -immediately fell in love with it. With the passing of time I started -wanting to know more about DOS, try new commands and quickly became -the first tech-aware person in my family (my parents both still -have great limitations in using Windows or Android nowadays), albeit -I managed to mess the system up several times, in spite of all the -core files having `ATTRIB` set to `+RSH`. By the turning of -Millennium, with the spread of PCs, Internet, Windows and MS Office -in offices and schools, we needed a machine capable of running -modern 32-bit Office and IE versions. In Jan '01, my mother told -a programmer friend of her to build us a brand new machine, which -turned out being a fabulous PC, equipped with a Netburst Pentium -IV, 256 MB RAM, running Windows ME on a FAT32-formatted 60G storage -(currently running Illumos, Tribblix 0m20.4 x86 on UFS), with a -remote-band dial-up 27 kbit/s connection, which can be easily -accounted as my favourite PC of all times. - -Every Sunday morning at the newsstand, I used to buy a magazine -named "Games for My Computer" which usually came bounded with great -game titles, mods, patches, reviews, demos, shareware, up to date -DirectX, at the modicum cost of 3-5 euros. As the years passed by, -I started buying other software-related magazines, until my attention -was caught by an article speaking of the proprietary UNIX system -history and its derivatives. It intrigued me so much, that I spent -the following days doing researches on this fantastic OS, and the -other CPU archs than x86/IA-64 it ran on, all of which I had been -completely unaware of until that moment. - -I wanted to learn use it, and Solaris was the one which looked most -promising and interesting to me at first sight, although running -it was _obviously_ completely out of question, being it a -server/workstation oriented OS meant for professional usage, running -on way too expensive hardware, in a time when all I needed was a -simple notebook for high school supporting an office suite and few -more programs. I had already made up my mind to either buy a MacBook -or get a Mandriva CD and Linux-supported laptop, when I discovered -about the pending release of OpenSolaris: open source Solaris with -focus on desktop including the latest GNOME, Firefox, Adobe Flash -Player and OpenOffice versions: "that's it", I thought, and few -months later I had my parents order a Toshiba Tecra M10 based on -Centrino 2 platform (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz, 4GB RAM DDR2, Intel -Wireless, currently running OpenIndiana 2018.04) coming with -OpenSolaris 2008.05 pre-installed. Everything worked out of the -box, exactly as I expected, even better and I began appreciating -the value of FOSS. - -I spent a lot of time playing with it, especially on customizing -GNOME2 (it was so good! still using MATE now) and attending DeviantArt, -in accordance with my previous experience with Windows XP customization. -I remember the eye-candy OpenSolaris screenshot on DeviantArt by -Vermaden. I learned about general Unix command line, started shell -scripting, and decided to pick up some Java programming basics -(OpenSolaris included NetBeans) as a self-taught. - -After the Sun acquisition by Oracle and the following OpenSolaris -withdrawal, I kept using it as long as it was worthwhile (c. 2011). -Later on, after having briefly considered the possibility of -OpenIndiana, I decided I wanted to try something new, with a wider -software availability. Providing I wanted to see how Windows was -faring too, I ended up switching back to Windows and installed 7. -During the last 3 high school years in fact, my interest towards -software as leisure-activity was progressively eclipsed by other -things, mainly friends, girls, books, the hockey championship. -Choosing what to do of my life turned out quite the hard task: I -loved many things, especially physics, biology, Latin and Greek, -computer science and philosophy. But I knew myself all too well, I -knew where my path was headed, I wanted to help people, and realized -my choice had been taken already. - -At University, I slowly began missing all that geeky stuff and -started thinking about installing a Unix OS and dedicate part of -my spare time to it once again. I remembered reading about the BSD -OS family and downloaded [FreeBSD] 9.3 in late 2013, putting it on -the Toshiba first (on UFS2), and later on on a 2011 Samsung NP-R519 -(even this one, fully supported) laptop, which my father gave me -after having totally messed it up and giving up with it, even though -he told me he had been forced to buy more powerful hardware for his -job (the program he needed didn't require more than 300 MB RAM). -I loved FreeBSD and its Handbook from the very first time. Well-designed -OS, stable, and consistent, very featured userland especially in -regard of networking tools, amazingly performing. The community -(and the BSD community in general) is very friendly, competent, -professional, but also prone to joke and have some fun from time -to time. FreeBSD increased my interest towards netsec, firewalls -and servers, until I ended up building a cheap FreeBSD box serving -as a FTPS NAS first, and jailed NextCloud on AMP stack next, behind -a IPFW firewall. This was mainly for learning/fun purposes. In the -meantime, I've also experienced setting up a media server (Plex, -Icecast + MPD-httpd, and LAN UPnP with minidlad + Kodi client). -Thanks to this, I learned a lot about networking and security, and -FreeBSD tools and documentation surely made that job smoother. -Lately I've also found the time to try bhyve and I must admit -developers did an amazing job improving it in the last few years. -It's become a serious, neat and performing hypervisor to the point -I think it's significantly underrated (Joyent wouldn't have ported -it to Illumos otherwise, already having KVM!). Around a year ago -my savings reached a dignitous-enough amount to allow me to buy and -build a custom desktop PC (not calling it workstation, cause that's -not the case). It currently runs FreeBSD 11.2 on ZFS with a FVWM -desktop, residing inside the rented flat I share with a colleague -in Rome, I also use it as a MPD music station with a SNDIO backend -(+a couple of good speakers), as host for bhyve and VBox VMs (the -OpenSuSE VM is dedicated to Netflix and Spotify), native FOSS and -Wine gaming: I discovered that many games I used to play in the -early '00s actually work very well under wine, so I'm having great -fun on it; also, here I want to thank the #openbsd-gaming community, -and Pertho in particular, for hosting the Quake Tournaments. - -Meanwhile, I got bored again and decided to try other OSs. I tried -Linux, Illumos, the other BSDs, and FreeDOS. - -Be it PC-DOS nostalgia, but I became immediately committed to the -FreeDOS community and development, participated to mailing lists, -deployed FreeDOS retro-gaming stations for friends, while starting -over playing a lot of 16-bit games, wrote tutorials, went back using -Corel Word Perfect 6.22 as my writing suite, started learning C on -it, analyzing FreeDOS internals through Pat Villani's FreeDOS kernel -book, reported bugs on new OpenGEM desktop release, and even committed -some patches. Currently I run FreeDOS on my mother's old Acer -TravelMate (from 2000). - -Trying Illumos instead brought my old Solaris love back to life and -even enhanced it. SMF, RBAC, CrossBow, Zones, SunStudio and the -fantastic Solaris userland are still there kicking. OpenIndiana is -the spiritual continuation of OpenSolaris anthe most true to it. I -run OI-Hipster on my Samsung laptop with a fluxbox desktop. In the -future I'd like to actively contribute to the IPS OpenCSW community -repo. Tribblix is a very well-thought piece of software. The fact -it's only maintained by a single person (who's actually also quite -keen to help users) really puzzles me: clean, lightweight Illumos -distribution, still supporting SPARC and x86, with a fantastic -packaging system (zap overlays) and up to date software, what else -could I ask? It brought my old Pentium IV PC back to life, showing -off some true old school taste with the latest CDE 2.3.0 release. -My plans for (a rather distant, due to lack of time and money) -future include buying a Sun Blade 1000 and building a v9OS (Illumos -distro) SPARC box. - -The BSDs are all terribly alluring. It's incredible how different -they can be from one another (well, that's what happens after 25 -years of divergent development with different goals in mind), and -how each one is perfect in its own way and still carries great -advantages over the others. From my perspective, there's no clear -winner among BSDs: they all do exactly what they're thought for in -a (almost) shameless way. - -Personally speaking, given my tastes, and priorities, I came to the -conclusion that the only BSD I like (slightly) more than FreeBSD, -is [NetBSD]. NetBSD is fun to use. I find it difficult to explain, -but it's a really enjoyable OS. It has those uncommon yet effective -design choices which make you stop and say: "hey, that's brilliant!". -NetBSD stands firm on its roots and is still very Unixist, actually -in my opinion the most consistent with 386BSD. NetBSD is extremely -simple, neat, lightweight, versatile, and portable. Performs -wonderfully on limited specs, old hardware, older archs and especially -embedded hardware. ARM SoCs support is astonishing, and it's improving -fast, especially on aarch64. Xen dom0, pkgsrc, NPF, Rump Kernels, -KASLR, nouveau, LVM, the almost ready ZFS, are other great features. - -Currently I run NetBSD on the old Toshiba, on my Rpi3 and on Pinebook -(both through aarch64 port). The Rpi3 works as NPF firewall, while -I use the Pinebook as IceWM desktop. I've successfully carried out -some nerd experiments on NetBSD, like running 4 Xen domU VMs at the -same time, building and running NeverWinter Nights Linux client -under the SuSE compat layer, setting up my mother's private office -router as a NetBSD box, building a NetBSD/HEAD Cinnamon desktop -using pkgswc-wip, deploying my personal Mail Server (OpenSMTPd, -Dovecot, Rspamd, dkimproxy, SquirreMail, NPF, Squid, Clamav): -eventually dismantled it due to time and money required to maintain -it and compared to advantages. Fastmail user now! I've seen many -people using NetBSD as learning platform: indeed I continue learning -C on it. - -In the last year I've been into *BSD and Illumos advocacy a lot on -social media. Those OSs are often undeservedly ignored and should -get more attention as examples of Unix done the right way. Wish I -could also help user Trihexagonal with his [tutorials on FreeBSD -desktop](http://trihexagonal.org). For the moment, I'm just -contributing with screenshots. I think so far I managed to bring -to BSD no more than a couple of pen friends known on *nix fora, one -to OpenBSD and OI-Hipster, the other to NetBSD. An Italian friend -of mine (IT graduate) decided to put FreeBSD on Chromebook, after -hearing me talking about it. My interest towards FreeBSD, led me -to make new precious acquaintances, especially Scott Robbins -(scottro), veteran admin and fantastic person, with whom I keep -corresponding by mail. - -In contrast with some Linux users spawning Arch Linux installs on -their relatives/friends/partners laptops, I'm of the opinion people -mustn't be forced, neither allured or convinced with false promises. -People need to be shown, providing they have the time and the will -to hear, make up their minds by their own-selves, and only then see -whether the red pill is suited for them or not. This more or less -applies to every single field of knowledge, not solely operating -systems: for instance, it applies to Medicine too. - -Find me on FreeBSD Forums and DaemonForums (@Sehnsucht94), as well -as [Mastodon](https://bsd.network/@sehnsucht) and -[Twitter](https://twitter.com/Vins_Quotes). - -_[21 Aug 2018](/raw/people/sehnsucht.md)_ - -[FreeBSD]: https://www.freebsd.org/ -[NetBSD]: https://www.netbsd.org/