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I've been building and maintaining a Linux boot utility USB drive for our Helpdesk office for a couple of years, using Ubuntu as a base. I really don't like Ubuntu for multiple reasons, and would like to find a good alternative. We use the utility drive primarily for data recovery, drive...

I've ended up missing some of the parts for one of my Hyper 212-EVO coolers, rendering it unusable. The part I am missing specifically is one of the anchor bolts that the heatsink screws into. Since CoolerMaster doesn't sell the accessory kit anymore in the US, I wanted to see if anyone had...

I came across this in my email today. Klara Systems has been one of the leading support companies for FreeBSD and ZFS solutions. I am particularly interested in the implementation of 2FA on my FreeBSD systems, but I figure that even if you don't use FreeBSD, this could be very informative to...

Yesterday was FreeBSD Day, marking the birthday of FreeBSD. Since it was also Father's Day in the US, I was busy celebrating with family. However, in honor of FreeBSD day, I have posted up a few tutorials based on how I setup a FreeBSD desktop workstation. If you're interested in trying out...

I'm working on an HP computer that has an Intel H10 Optane drive. It got updated to Windows 11, but the Intel RST driver apparently wasn't updated, and the version from HP for this computer isn't compatible with anything newer than Win 10 1909. Because the RST driver is required for the OS to...

Due to issues with the handling of L3 cache and preferred cores, Windows 11 saw some performance regressions on AMD Ryzen processors. This issue is now reportedly resolved by a Windows patch and an update to the AMD chipset driver. If anyone running Windows 11 on Ryzen and observed the...

According to this report from Bloomberg News (paywall, but get 5 free articles before needing to sign up), SiFive has decided to walk away from Intel's 2 billion USD buy-out offer. According to the article, SiFive did not like the amount, but especially was uneasy about Intel's roadmap for...

Our church uses a Allen & Heath QU-32 digital sound board. We use the USB output to send audio signal to a computer for live streaming. An alternate configuration is that the QU-32 can send straight digital information from the USB to another mixer, with a 1-1 channel mapping. We are wanting...

FreeBSD 13.0 has been officially released. See here for the release announcement, and here for more detailed release notes. Some of the highlights that are especially of interest to me: - Removal of significant amounts of obsolete programs and code. While this breaks some backwards...

I've been writing some script utilities for hard drives, with the intention of having a non-graphical, quick to boot, text menu-driven system to perform operations such as SMART tests and secure erase. I had been using FreeBSD to develop, but the incompatibility with many HP UEFI...

I am working on creating a multi-boot USB drive with various OS environments. I'm using GRUB2 from Ubuntu as my base, to get the UEFI and Secure Boot capabilities. I want to have a dedicated EFI partition, and a separate partition on the USB drive to store ISO files. I am having problems...

Recent changes made by the FreeBSD core team regarding patent policies as mentioned here now makes it possible to install lame and the fusefs-exfat programs via packages instead of ports. This is big news, as those are two very important pieces of software for a usable modern desktop operating...

So I want to build a useful shell script, using sh, that will provide a menu to run SMART tests on a hard drive. The intent is to have this on a bootable USB drive and run it on various computers. Since the exact computer disk configuration will be unknown, I will need a way to scan for the...

I finally got around to upgrading my computer, and as part of that, I purchased a pair of WD SN750 NVME SSDs. I initially put on in my laptop to test, and noticed that whenever I was doing anything with drive transfers, there would be a rather noticeable hissing sound coming from the SSD...

After 7 years of use, it appears that one of my mirrored hard drives in my home server has failed. Thankfully, the second drive is working fine, so no data loss, and I have backups. The mirror was created using Windows software RAID. I want to rebuild the mirror, but was a little uncertain...

I just picked up a Dell Latitude e5570 with good specs (i7 6820HQ, 16GB RAM, 512GB ssd, 1080 screen, Radeon discreet graphics), and thought I'd give NomadBSD a try. NomadBSD is a spin of FreeBSD, essentially being the base OS with pre-installed applications and configurations. The "twist" so...

I had planned to upgrade my desktop to a Ryzen 3600 with my tax return money. I had planned on purchasing the ASUS Prime X470 Pro, as it had all the features I wanted at a price I could live with. I get my tax return today, and low and behold, no body has stock of the motherboard I want...

I just had opportunity to try something that was posted on the FreeBSD forums with my AMD Radeon RX590. Previously, using the default drm-kmod drivers, the screen would go blank and the fans would spin up to full speed. A user on the FreeBSD forums posted a link to a development version that...

I have a Dell Precision M4800, which has a 2.5" and an mSATA slot, so I am dual-booting Windows and FreeBSD on separate drives, using the Dell boot menu. I wanted as close to an Apples-to-Apples comparison to working with FreeBSD vs Windows, especially when it came to performance and battery...

Big news in the FreeBSD world: One of the big complaints/drawbacks for FreeBSD, especially for desktop usage, was that it lagged behind in hardware support, specifically Wi-Fi. This changes quite a bit with this commit, as FreeBSD will now have support for Intel's current Wi-Fi chips. I am...

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15030/intel-announces-q3-fy-2019-earnings-record-results Looks like they took a hit in the client computing space, but increased well in datacenter and other market segments. Personally, I think there are a few of big takeaways. First, x86-64 computing is not...

From Techpowerup Reading the article it seems like Fortress IG is a patent troll, which I'm all in favor of squashing, and think it is great that a company with Intel's size and resources are taking them to task. But isn't Intel filing an ant-trust lawsuit a bit of the pot calling the kettle...

It appears that the updates made in 10.15 renders the programs used by DJ's unusable. Article in Forbes More detail in The Verge "It just works"

Due to the conversation in the news forum, and previous conversations here, I wanted to start some data collection on the Windows 10 Account Creation issue. Specifically, some people are reporting that while connected via Ethernet when installing Windows 10, the option to create a local account...

Info and analysis at AT https://www.anandtech.com/show/14745/nvidia-q2-fy-2020-earnings-report-continuing-crypto-disruption NVIDIA's press release with much more data: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-for-second-quarter-fiscal-2020 All I can say is Ouch!

ASRock has now listed a thin-mini ITX motherboard for AM4 processors, the A320TM-ITX Highlights include: Bristol Ridge and Raven Ridge Support Memory support up to DDR-2933, 32GB total supported (QVL currently only has 2x HDMI outputs (one is oddly positioned on the side of the board) NVME...

Apparently, according to NewEgg, managing wi-fi networks should only be done by people three years old or older:

I'm building a utility USB drive with multiple boot environments, based on an Ubuntu Live cd (that way it works with UEFI/Secure boot). I am trying to get teh Bitdefender live rescue cd added, but am having a problem when it tries to initialiize the root device with the error message "Could...

I am working on creating a custom Ubuntu Live USB disk for use in our help desk office. I am using Cubic, and the basic process is working fine, but I have a couple questions I am having problems finding the answers to. First - I would like to have the default background image set to one of...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/nasty-security-bug-found-and-fixed-in-linux-apt/ Figured you'd like to know if you are running a Debian based distribution. Apparently this security bug allows for a fairly easy man-in-the-middle attack,, which could also allow an attacker root access to your...

This was originally discussed in the General Mayhem forum. The general consensus was that it was a "useless" product, but I opened my mouth and talked about how cheap it was, it would be worth it to buy and review. So, to put my money where my mouth is, I purchased it, and gave it a review. I...

With the FreeBSD 12.0 release coming soon, I've decided to give it a serious go as a desktop OS. There are two major things with this release that has me wanting to try this: Improved graphics drivers to support recent AMD and Intel video chips, and native SMB v2 and v3 support. I just...

Since the Beta was just released, I thought I'd give Haiku a try. I currently have it installed in a VM, and it seems to be working ok. A little sluggish, but I attribute that mainly to the VM on the laptop. I haven't done much with it, but I can login to [H] and post this message using the...

Just received an email advising that the Atari VCS (formerly Ataribox) will have pre-order information available in April. Also, a few images of prototype controllers were released. While still quite short on any information regarding technical specs, Atari does state it will be a...

So, in reading comments under Linus Torvald's statement regarding CTS-Labs AMD "report," one comment that came up was this: Just got me curious, what architectures might this poster have been speaking of? With Meltdown/Spectre, IME, and other such CPU security issues of the last year or so...

I am seriously considering getting an iPhone SE for my pre-paid cellular service. I received some gift money, and the price they are being offered is hard to pass up. I am certain that out of the box, the phone will have an older version of iOS installed, and will need updated. Reading...

Yesterday, I had to take a "network administration" test for a job I applied for. It was almost all OSI layer, IPv4 math, and IP protocol questions. Simple, basic, Net + stuff, not anything that really applies to net admin stuff. Anyway, It gets me every time I study for this stuff or take a...

I am looking at doing a project that will be very space constrained, so heat dissipation will be a major concern. I plan on using a Pentium G4560 or G4600 (really can't afford the "i" processors right now). I do plan on trying out some underclocking/undervolting to keep heat down, but wondered...

So the fan noise in my computer is finally starting to get to me. I guess what really tripped the line is that I discovered how easy and beneficial it is to mildly overclock my video card. Only problem is that the fans go crazy loud under any load. What was annoying but tolerable is really...

Found this over at pcper: https://www.pcper.com/news/Processors/AMD-Launching-Ryzen-5-Six-Core-Processors-Soon-Q2-2017 apparently the leak is showing R5 to be in Q2, and R3 in H2. Personally I'm looking for the APU's coming out even later!