On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 22:23 -0700, Gary L. Allen wrote: > Hi All, > > Brain-dead observations and questions follow- run for your lives! > > I have always wanted to look at a "real UNIX" distribution of some kind, > and recently got a FreeBSD CD. I visited the Web site and noted that the > version on my CD is just a bit old. Nonetheless, I gathered some > supported hardware from the PC bone yard at work and built myself a > 400MHz PII, 224MB RAM, 3COM 3C905B-TX NIC, nVIDIA RIVA TNT2 64 Video. > The FSB is 100MHz and it has 512kB L2 Cache. I added a 14GB UATA Mode 2 > disk and tested it out with Ubuntu first to make sure I had built a > "sound" PC. It worked like a charm.
Glad to see you are giving FreeBSD a try Gary. I've been using FreeBSD for years and years, longer than I've been using Linux, and the installer hasn't changed very much in that time. The DragonFly project, a code fork of FreeBSD 4.x, has a very nice GUI installer that will hopefully replace the ancient sysinstall program that FreeBSD team keeps because it "just works(tm)". I strongly suggest that you upgrade to FreeBSD 5.3 or later. 5.4 is the current release. I would consider 5.0 beta quality at best, and I wouldn't suggest running it at all when most of the issues in 5.0 have been long since resolved, and the config file layout is much more sane. If you are willing to fight with FreeBSD a bit, it makes a great desktop, but where FreeBSD really shines is on the server. It has a consistent core and binaries between releases, and the ports system to keep 3rd party software up to date. I've never installed FreeBSD with an Nvidia card before, but you can download the driver from Nvidia's website. Much like other distros, the Nvidia driver can't be shipped with the OS due to license issues. If the card is working now, that is because it is using the slower open source NV driver, which ships with Xorg (or XFree86 in your case. Upgrade to 5.4, seriously). Feel free to ask questions about FreeBSD, and I'll do the best I can. Check the handbook and faq first though, as it answers many common questions. Also, post your questions to the list! We are not only Linux, but open source supporters here. You are certainly on topic. Oh, and upgrade to 5.4, in case I forgot to type that. -- Mark C. Ballew - Free Software advocate, admin, and developer [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP: 0xB2A33008 http://www.markballew.com AIM: pdx110
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