Installing FreeBSD on Parallels

To get networking to work, don't use ipv6.

Xorg settings: Use pcm0 for the mouse driver, sysmouse won't work with the trackpad. Use the default keyboard model (not macbook) vesa for the video card driver. Fullscreen mode is 1280x800

xmonad: Works fine, remember to get xmonad-contrib. xmobar works, but won't be able to get cpu/mem/etc info from /proc. Haven't tried dzen2 yet.

I wonder if I can get a smaller image size if I use a different disk partition. ~5GB for a minimalistic install seems a bit much.

VMWare vs Parallels - It's not about the speed

There's plenty of VMWare vs. Parallels comparisons, but none yet that covers the most important thing for me in a virtual machine: How much of a pain in the neck is it to install something that's not Windows, onto a non-default VM? In my case, Parallels wins that one.

Screen resolution

GDM doesn't like to play nice with /etc/X11/xorg.conf . It insists on using a different resolution, which is annoying when one doesn't want to use the Gnome control center. Enter xrandr:

xrandr --output VGA --mode 1280x1024

Now all I have to figure out is how to re-enable the laptop screen with the external monitor plugged in.

xmonad mystery mending

I had been baffled because on the machines where I had set up xmonad I could not get the alleged exit keystrokes (Mod+shift+Q) to work. Turns out, it was a remnant from when I had experimented with using xmonad instead of Metacity in Gnome. Changing the main method in ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs from gnomeConfig to defaultConfig fixed that.

Memories fom yore

The man who counted was the first book that really got me interested in math. Great reading material for young and adults alike.

Safari 4 tweaks

Disable `Google Suggests':

defaults write com.apple.Safari \
DebugSafari4IncludeGoogleSuggest -bool NO

Also, Safari 4 breaks the GrowlMail bundle. Oh well.

Installing Opera from tarball without sudo priviledges

The online documentation in the Opera KB says to use

--prefix= to install everything to .

. That however is not enough I find, as the script won't create the necessary directories. Hobo solution: Check the error log from the install script and create them by hand.

PS: If you use Gnome (or at the very least gnome-terminal), don't forget to change the default browser in gnome-control-center (I tried the gconftool way first, but no dice).