Operating Systems

Links, hints and stuff:

• Windows NT/2000/XP Best avoided.
  
  
• Linux
  
  
• FreeBSD. BSD is lean and mean - ideal for servers. Linux distros tend to be more bloated, though that may make for a more convenient workstation install.
  
  
  • Qmail on FreeBSD. Some notes on some useful patches, mainly focussed on mild but effective anti-spam measures (such as binning obviously invalid senders or recipients at the SMTP stage, to avoid accepting the message at all). In the end I also wrote a little patch for djb's RBL SMTP blocker, to log the SMTP headers of the messages it rejects.
    
    
  • Low-power servers: Soekris computers. Less is more; a good match for BSD.
    
    
  • Konica Minolta Magicolor 5430DL laser printer: CUPS driver installation on FreeBSD 6.0
    
    
  • Xorg.conf for Asus Radeon 9250 AGP dual-head. Warning!At the time of writing (May 2006), DUAL HEAD DOES NOT WORK on the new modular-Xorg build, so if you want to see it working, you'll need (on FreeBSD) to use the 'portdowngrade' utility to this little lot:

    # pkg_info | grep xorg
    xorg-clients-6.8.2_1 X client programs and related files from X.Org
    xorg-documents-6.8.2 Documentation of X11 protocol and libraries from X.Org
    xorg-fonts-100dpi-6.9.0_1 X.Org 100dpi bitmap fonts
    xorg-fonts-75dpi-6.9.0_1 X.Org 75dpi bitmap fonts
    xorg-fonts-cyrillic-6.9.0_1 X.Org Cyrillic bitmap fonts
    xorg-fonts-encodings-6.9.0_1 X.Org font encoding files
    xorg-fonts-miscbitmaps-6.9.0_1 X.Org miscellaneous bitmap fonts
    xorg-fonts-truetype-6.9.0 X.Org TrueType fonts
    xorg-fonts-type1-6.9.0 X.Org Type1 fonts
    xorg-fontserver-6.8.2_1 X font server from X.Org
    xorg-libraries-6.8.2 X11 libraries and headers from X.Org
    xorg-manpages-6.8.2 X.Org library manual pages
    xorg-nestserver-6.8.2 Nesting X server from X.Org
    xorg-printserver-6.8.2_2 X Print server from X.Org
    xorg-server-6.8.2_7 X.Org X server and related programs
    xorg-vfbserver-6.8.2 X virtual framebuffer server from X.Org
    

    Then you just need to remember to exclude (-x) anything beginning with 'xorg' next time you portupgrade.