Arch linux x86_64 rocks.

I just bought the latest Linux Format DVD, and I tried to boot the Fedora Core 14 distribution on the disc and it would not work, it gave me an error to do with the compressed filesystem. But I got a copy of FreeBSD 8.1 and I will give that a try later and see how I go, I have run FreeBSD on my old Pentium II before and it was awesome so I will give it a go and see if I can get a fast UNIX system installed.

Here is a good little program I wrote in C. Just for fun.

#include <stdio.h>
 
#define EQ ==
#define OP "Troll."
#define trololol printf
 
int lineofstars (void) {
	int x = 0;
	while (x < 64) {
		printf("*");
		x++;
		if (x EQ 31) {
			printf("<|>");
		} else if (x EQ 64) {
			printf("\n-\n");
		}
	}
}
 
int main (int argc, char** argv) {
 
	char *name;
	name = "OP";
	lineofstars();
	trololol("According to this, %s is a %s\n", name, OP);
	return 0;
}

Not a bad little program, and I got the code to work first time, not bad. Writing code in standard C is better than C++ or C#, the old C language is still the best. The whole Linux kernel is written in C and if it is good enough for that project, it is good enough for me. I am running kernel 2.6.37-rc6 and it is the best and fastest version of the Linux kernel so far, with many optimizations for better performance. I am not a fan of Ubuntu, but I have to say that it would benefit from enhanced performance and also better hardware compatibility with the Open Source Broadcom drivers in the kernel. Just bought a 320GB external disk to backup files from my SATA hard disk and over USB 3.0 it is taking about 10 hours to copy 47.9 GB of files to the drive. I guess the device does not support USB 3.0 at all, but once the files are copied then I can relax, as the files will be backed up and safe. I just installed the 64bit version of Arch Linux. This system is very fast indeed and well worth the installation time. You just have to set up your hard disk partitions and then the software to be installed and you are set. I found this very good Linux blog here http://blog.lynxworks.eu/tag/arch-linux/ that has good information about various Linux issues. I am trying to chroot into my Arch Linux installation to install software, but I cannot chroot into a 64bit installation with a 32bit version of Linux, so I need to wait and install my 64Bit OpenSuse Linux, then I can finish setting up the operating system.

But I am happy still, I have got the initial system setup and I just need to get some other things installed then it will be perfect.