The TEK Cleave: A unique typing experience

[New to Gemini? Have a look at my Gemini FAQ.] This article was bi-posted to Gemini and the Web; Gemini version is here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/kraileth/neunix/2023/tek-cleave.gmi In this article I compare the new TEK Cleave to the classic TEK (Truly Ergonomic Keyboard). If you are unfamiliar with the former and want to know more, you can read …

A SPARC in the night – SunFire v100 exploration

While we see a total dominance of x86_64 CPUs today, there are at least some alternatives like ARM and in the long run hopefully RISC-V. But there are other interesting architectures as well - one of them is SPARC (the Scalable Processor ARChitecture). This article is purely historic, I'm not reviewing new hardware here. It's …

Thoughts on being a “power user” (1/3)

Every so often I come across the term "power user". It's used to describe people who are more knowledgeable and capable than the casual or regular users are. Now it's pretty obvious that this definition leaves a lot of room in considering somebody a power user or not. People seem to generally agree you don't …

Building a BSD home router (pt. 8): ZFS and jails

Previous parts of this series: Part 1 (discussing why you want to build your own router and how to assemble the APU2), Part 2 (some Unix history explanation of what a serial console is), Part 3 (demonstrating serial access to the APU and covering firmware update), Part 4 (installing pfSense), Part 5 (installing OPNsense instead) …

Building a BSD home router (pt. 7): Advanced OPNsense installation

Previous parts of this series: Part 1 (discussing why you want to build your own router and how to assemble the APU2), Part 2 (some Unix history explanation of what a serial console is), Part 3 (demonstrating serial access to the APU and covering firmware update), Part 4 (installing pfSense), Part 5 (installing OPNsense instead) …

Building a BSD home router (pt. 6): pfSense vs. OPNsense

Part 1 of this article series was about why you want to build your own router, and how to assemble the APU2 that I chose as the hardware to build it from. Part 2 gave some Unix history and explained what a serial console is. Part 3 demonstrated serial access to the APU and showed …

Building a BSD home router (pt. 5): Installing OPNsense

Part 1 of this article series was about why you want to build your own router, and how to assemble the APU2 that I chose as the hardware to build this on. Part 2 gave some Unix history and explained what a serial console is. Part 3 demonstrated serial access to the APU and showed …

Building a BSD home router (pt. 4): Installing pfSense

Part 1 of this article series was about why you want to build your own router, and how to assemble the APU2 that I chose as the hardware to build this on. Part 2 gave some Unix history and explained what a serial console is. Part 3 demonstrated serial access to the APU and showed …

Building a BSD home router (pt. 3): Serial access and flashing the firmware

Part 1 of this article series was about why you want to build your own router, and how to assemble the APU2 that I chose as the hardware to build this on. Part 2 gave some Unix history and explained what a serial console is. In this post we will prepare a USB memstick to …

Building a BSD home router (pt. 1): Hardware (PC Engines APU2)

Pretty much everybody in the western world has internet access at home these days. It's not a big deal: You conduct a contract with some ISP. They send you a modem/router combo box that you plug in, do some simple setup and you're done. Those boxes are pretty much ubiquitous pieces of hardware, silently doing …