Free BSD 5.4

airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
edited June 2005 in Science & Tech
My friend ordered free bsd 5.4 off of ebay, which was kinda dumb seein as he paid for a CD-R but he has dial-up and he didnt feel like askin me to download it for him, but what are your thoughts on the OS, thought about dual bootin it with XP, hmmmm. what are your thought, with the experience ive had with some, (fedora) they have been a little shakey at times.... :scratch:

Comments

  • TheBaronTheBaron Austin, TX
    edited June 2005
    what exactly has been shakey? every linux distro ive used, including fedora, is 50x more stable than windows on the same machine. I'm talking right out of the box, with updates.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    while I wouldn't quite say 50x as stable, I have had no problems with fedora installs on 4 systems. I've not ventured into other distros, but since I'm happy w/ fedora, I don't feel the need to yet.

    How much experience does your friend have with BSD?
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    Some basic thoughts:

    If your friend wants to try a *nix, start with a Linux and later use BSD. Primesuspect or tk might want to weigh in on BSD, but from what I understand it is more command line based than is Linux.

    Fedora Core 4 and Mandrake are about equally usable. They each have some hardware they support that the other distro does not support. I just got a new laser printer, so far have not been able to get my new laser printer to work with Mandrake. I do not doubt I WILL be able to, but have been playing with Linux and find it very good and use Mozilla with it to surf, and am posting from a Mandrake 10.2 (2005 LE) based OS right now. I also have OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 on this Linux box (OOo is available free for windows also, as is Mozilla).

    I also have a Windows box for business use, though.
  • BriltBrilt brooklyn
    edited June 2005
    freebsd is great but straight_man is right its more command line based,
    well that is until u load a graphical user interface (i used KDE)

    I took a web admin class using freeBSD and i loved it. It has a learning curve and ur gonna wanna have the handbook(free on the webpage)and such readily available.

    Its really stable, FreeBSD is what googles servers run. A lot of servers run FreeBSD and it can completely replace windows ....... if you don't do that much gaming. which is the reason i havn't switched completely

    oh yeah another gripe about freebsd is that it takes a while to get drivers for new hardware. As my teacher explained the reason for this is becuase 85% of people use windows, of the 15% left 1% of those use freebsd.

    The easiest way to install is if u have 2 machines and can read the guides online while ur installing. One thing i gotta say is that everything is pretty well documented so if u don't mind reading go for it
  • JengoJengo Pasco, WA | USA
    edited June 2005
    I dont reccomend Free BSD as a starting nix system. Its hard for a first Linux distro and it can have you turning away and never coming back to linux. I reccomend He try some easier distros. Especially for a Dual Boot, hes probably gonna have to set up Lilo/grub manually with FreeBSD and that can get tricky.

    I reccomend he get one of these distros:
    -Ubuntu/Kubuntu (increadibly easy to install and have as a Second OS, also its a derivative of Debian so you have that nifty Apt-get feature to install Apps in a snap!)
    -Slackware (for a first time user this is sort of easy to install and comes with a lot of great features. This doesnt have a lot of the easy stuff that mandrake and Debian have for installing apps so you have to learn how. Its a great OS to learn Linux with)
    -Mandrake 10.xx (this is a VERY easy Distro to install and use, not as easy as Ubuntu but very easy none the less)
    -Fedora (this is just like mandrake in ease of use and simplicity although they change the default GUI Skins and put there own its still easy to use.)

    These are some easy linux distros that i have used for myself. Currently my favorite is Ubuntu just cause its so darn easy to do everything you want in it. not only that but you can order CDs for free from them on there site. (google ubuntu) if you have any more questions just let me know!
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    BSD != Linux

    But yeah, BSDs are a bit more difficult to master than say, Fedora or Mandrake. They use graphical installers, while BSDs use text-based ones. Just partitioning a drive in *BSD can be a daunting task to the neophyte. As you get more comfortable, you should start delving into the command line, which is very powerful, and somewhat of a necessity, unlike in Windows.
  • BriltBrilt brooklyn
    edited June 2005
    kwtiko is right freebsd isn't linux but since thier both based on unix thier similar in some aspects

    and jengo has a point there are linux distros that are a lot more user friendly. Personally i learned FreeBSD before i knew much about linux but if ur patient and read the guides u can do it

    but they are different operating systems. i like freebsd more then linux but to be fare i've used freebsd a whole lot more
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    he has a little more linux experience than me, he's used redhat, suse, mandrake, compaqs unix, and some other distros, Ive used redhat and fedora, the fedora i installed right when core 4 came out for it and I was trying to get all the drivers and updates to download for but they were going at a stunning .5 kbs and i couldnt take it, and I play quite a few games so thats why i wanted to dual boot it, but fedora did look good but i was having hardware issues with it and thats probably what made it a little shakey. I'm gonna help him install BSD and then see how it goes, and if it goes good ill put it on my comp when i get my new drives.
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    most of his experience is in linux, this will only be his second unix distro
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    Hey, im on kubuntu, its a really nice os, but I cant really appreciate it since im stuck in 640*480 screen resolution, navigating the internet is a challenge like this, but that is probaby because of my old video card, (8 mb trident), but do you think it could be because of my old LCD monitor??? I dont think that would make a difference. If someone could tell me what generation my LCD is and what the generations are, id like to know??? but being able to utilize all of my proc. is awesome. so much quicker when I can use all of this Athalon 64 2800+.
    But anyway, back to the os, looks verygood from the livecd, and im sure it will be much quicker when installed on a hard-drive. cant wait!!!
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