[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: FreeBSD

	Well, in a bout of boredom, I installed FreeBSD on a P200 MMX
with 32 Megs of RAM and all usual favourites (no SVGA card, but I wasn't
interested on X anyway). My first impression is a good one. A very good
one in fact. The installation over the network is _fantatastic_: you
download *two* files (so you need two floppies) for the kernel and for
the filesystem. From there onwards, it's all menu driven. It's really
good to see that the help bits are given for people familiar with linux
:) ("as opossed to Linux, where you have N partitions, FreeBSD usually has one
with several subdivisions on it blah blah blah"). I also has a package
selection tool that is very much at the same stage of "black arts" as
dselect of debian fame, but it installs flawlessly. In fact, I found it
far more straightforward than RH or Mandrake.

	Only problems I found:
	(i) No bash by default
	(ii) No bash by default
	(iii) No bash by default
	 and a couple more things :)

	Seriously, I found it a bit awkward to choose a keyboard other
than the US one, but given that I installed while doing some other stuff
and trying not to read the documentation (i was trying to work out how
straightforward it would be for someone with a little experience in
Linux), and I also found annoying the fact that when you use make to
download/compile packages, it connects to the main mirror, irrespective
of it being in Madagascar or Reunion Island. I would have thought you
can probably change that so that you get a nice close mirror.

	All in all, a very enjoyable experience. I guess that some linux
distros could use the ftp knowledge to offer such a flawless network
install.

	Regards,
	José

--
José L Gómez Dans			PhD student
					Radar & Communications Group
					Department of Electronic Engineering
					University of Sheffield UK
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
To unsubscribe from this list send mail to
- <sheflug-request [at] vuw.ac.nz> - with the word 
 "unsubscribe" in the body of the message. 

  GNU the choice of a complete generation.