Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 05:41:08AM +0200, P.U.Kruppa wrote: On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Edward and Nancy Powers wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Thanks. Another idea: First try a live CD (Freesbie), as recommended above, to get used to everything (won't do any harm). Then get a second hard drive and install freebsd on this (should be cheaper than buying Partition Magic). You can dual boot both systems then and leave your XP installation as is. What are the memory requirements of Freesbie? Wouldn't 128MB be a bit tight? -- Frank echo f r a n k @ e s p e r a n c e - l i n u x . c o . u k | sed 's/ //g' ---PGP keyID: 0x10BD6F4B--- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 04:54:14PM -0400, Edward and Nancy Powers wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? The ideal approach for someone in your situation would be to download and install http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ and then download a ready to use FreeBSD appliance http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/ or, alternatively, go through the installation process yourself by installing FreeBSD from a CD using vmware. You can experiment to your hearts content without affecting your current system. Your PC is more than adequate to run FreeBSD (provided the hardware is supported), but would require an extra 128MB RAM for vmware. The problem is your version of Windows. Maybe you can buy a used copy of Windows 2000 from someone? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
New to FreeBSD/UNIX
I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Thanks. Ed Powers ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
On 18/09/06, Edward and Nancy Powers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Thanks. Ed Powers ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Probably the best thing to do first is to find out which version of UNIX is covered on the DVD; there are many dialects, and if you choose the wrong one (i.e. one which is too different from the one on the DVD) you may become lost. Jeff Rollin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
On 2006 Sep 18 , at 16:54, Edward and Nancy Powers wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. Installing FreeBSD (as a UNIX) for the first time is not that hard of a daunting task. In all beginner cases, it is recommended that beginners start with the FreeBSD handbook: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html The FreeBSD website also has very excellent documentation on how to install the system and how to use every aspect of it, for beginners thru experts, in the documentation section. http://www.freebsd.org/docs/books.html My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Most important is to have some way to backup and preserve your Windows data, or to resize your windows partition to make some room for FreeBSD. The FreeBSD base system CAN be installed in as little as a few hundred megabytes, but I would recommend a gigabyte or two, just to get used to the system, and to have some space to expand. This advice generally applies to other UNIX systems, and UNIX-Like systems. -- Adam David Alan Martin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Someone suggested finding out what your guide book covered, but presuming it is pretty generic, FreeBSD will be fine to learn on. Since you want to leave your MS stuff on the machine, you have two choices. One is to shrink the disk slice that MS is using to make room for the other OS (FreeBSD). -- You didn't mention how much room you have on your disk, but I would suggest you want 10 GB or more to play with unless you don't plan to add Xwindows or a web server or an office system (OpenOffice) or a desktop/X manager. The other choice is to scrounge up another box to play with or at least to add another disk to the one you have. For shrinking the space that MS is using, I have had good luck with a product called Partition Magic. It is not freeware - around $70 and available from online stores and in places like Best Buy. There are a couple of Freeware utilities, and I think they work OK on plain vanilla FAT16 and FAT32 MS file systems, but they will not handle NTFS and some of the newer extended/logical partitions and I have had to muck with those. PM works fine on those too. Presuming you have disk space ready and are prepared to go, then: Download and burn or buy the latest FreeBSD ISO installation CD. If you have a fast network connection, just use the first boot-only CD and install everything else over the net. If your are on dial-up, get both CD-1 and CD-2. Plug in the CD and boot the machine. select doing the standard install Choose to install everything including the ports and X-Windows Put real life values in the network configuration screen. Specify your disk divisions and tell it to install the FreeBSD MBR (top choice of three) Make sure you hit the 's' in the fdisk part to make the slice bootable. How you divide the FreeBSD slice is by personal preference. I might suggest making at least: /(eg root) swap /tmp If you have disk room to divide up more, then add some of /usr /var /home The ones you do not create special room for will end up just being in / so that has to have enough room. If you make separate partitions for /usr and /var and /home, then your root can be small. I would say at least 128 MB, maybe 192 MB. Swap should be at least twice your installed memory. /tmp seems to be good at around 512 MB, although most of the time half that would be OK. The /usr partition needs to be rather big if you install a lot of ports.I have used up more than 10 GB in /usr doing installs before. That was when I built some things like OpenOFfice from ports instead of just using packages. /var gets a lot of things like logs and spool files (for printers and Email and databases, etc) If you don't do much with the machine, you can get by with less than 1 GB /var, but if you do a lot, go for 3 or 4 GB. Then, let the install rip. When it gets done, run xorgcfg to configure X and learn how to set up a windows manager. I use Afterstep. Some like to push KDE or Gnome, but they are overkill for me.For Afterstep, you can edit the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc to make it come up with the windows and fonts you want. You can also edit the file: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/afterstep/system.steprc if you want to use Afterstep. I just change it so when I click on the Netscape icon it brings up firefox instead of Netscape, since Netscape is gone, but still referenced by default. Guess I could put in a new icon too, but I haven't bothered. Of course, you will want to install Firefox and Thunderbird as browsers or if you use KDE, just use what it has. If you want it to receive Email, put sendmail_enable=YES in /etc/rc.conf. The rest is all just fun to experiment and play with. Have fun, jerry Thanks. Ed Powers ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 04:54:14PM -0400, Edward and Nancy Powers wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Oh, one more thing, I should have mentioned first. Check out the FreeBSD Handbook which is online at the FreeBSD web site. It is quire complete for installations and setting up the system. jerry Thanks. Ed Powers ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Edward and Nancy Powers wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? It sounds like what you want to do is to follow along with the DVD while doing their examples on a UNIX machine. Assuming this is the case, I would try do dig up another computer somewhere and install FreeBSD on it. For this sort of purpose, it doesn't need to be very fast or new. My mailserver is running 6.1 on a K6-2 at 400 MHz, and it's fine. Or, treat yourself to a new PC and then you'll have the P3 for experimenting. It is certainly possible (subject to available disk space) to repartition your existing drive and install FreeBSD on it as others have suggested, but then you'd be dual-booting. That is, you'd have to reboot to switch between FreeBSD and Windows, so you wouldn't be able to see both at once. I think this would be really tedious for what you're describing. Finally, I would not install X on the practice machine unless/unitl the tutorial has you do that. For a basic UNIX system in the form of FreeBSD, I would install the developer - full sources, but no X option from the CD. (That may not be worded quite right, it's from memory.) Hope this helps. Good luck, and welcome! Give us a shout when further questions arise. Almost forgot: another possibility is that some kind soul (or not-so-kind hosting company?) would be willing to give or rent you a shell account, so you could explore around on a remote system. The machine wouldn't be physically on your desk, but it would be in a window on your desktop. -- Chris Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** [ Busy Expunging | ] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
Edward and Nancy Powers wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Thanks. Ed Powers If you want to do it on the cheap, try a LiveCD. http://www.freesbie.org Not sure if this distro would let you do what your DVD is asking you to do, but you can run it on your machine without changing your existing system. If money isn't a big deal, if I were in your shoes I would buy a new machine with XP, install whatever you want to play with on the old machine, and buy a KVM switch. I found FreeBSD a lot easier to learn while I had a working Windows machine that I was familiar with at my fingertips. IMHO, the problem your most likely to run into when trying to run two OS's on a single machine is that if you run into a problem, you have to reboot to get on a working system to get on the Internet and find help. Another option would be vmware, but I don't know if it will run on ME. According to their site, it's only listed as a guest system, not a host system. Best regards, Greg Groth ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: New to FreeBSD/UNIX
On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Edward and Nancy Powers wrote: I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to run commands and become familiar with the system. I wish to use this system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I do not want to replace Windows at this time. My PC has: Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz, Windows ME operating system. What course of action do you recommend that I take? Thanks. Another idea: First try a live CD (Freesbie), as recommended above, to get used to everything (won't do any harm). Then get a second hard drive and install freebsd on this (should be cheaper than buying Partition Magic). You can dual boot both systems then and leave your XP installation as is. Regards, Uli. Ed Powers ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Peter Ulrich Kruppa Wuppertal Germany --- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
