Hello,
I am wondering whether there are BSD users here. I believe both NetBSD and Open BSD run on Macs. The OpenBSD I suppose is used for serving purposes. How does a BSD work as a desktop, with a Gnome, or K environment, and say a Gnome, or other UI?
I run NetBSD on a number of servers, including three colocated PowerMac servers. OpenBSD's support for non-i386 architectures in not quite as mature as NetBSD's, in my opinion.
As far as GUIs are concerned, most ATI chips (since they are the most commonly found in Macs) will work with X, and you can run KDE or Gnome or whatever you like on top.
Personally, I'm waiting for either KDE or Gnome to have the basic functionality and usability of AmigaDOS. Right now, they are nothing but a big mess - completely unusable for either beginners or those of us accustom to consistency and the user being in charge of the computer, not the other way around. I use Mac OS X as a desktop. But that's just my opinion from observation and personal use.
The machines that I am using now are a G5, which I am going to install more RAM in, and a Quicksilver dual 800 G4.
Neither OpenBSD nor NetBSD supports the G5 yet. NetBSD supports SMP, but OpenBSD does not yet.
However, I do have a 350 G3 that I have thought about putting another drive in to, and using a BSD, or a linux on.
If you want easy and decent desktop support, Yellow Dog seems the way to go. If you want stability and security, NetBSD is a good choice.
It seems like the linux distributions are the ones that get the attention, and work, by which I mean the desktop kind of attention. For a linux, I thought I would use Ubuntu, or perhaps YellowDog.
In my opinion, GNU/Linux gets the media and mindshare, but it's really messy and insecure by default. So it all depends on what you want to do with the machine/
But I am very curious about how BSD works with an interface, on a Mac. The G3 has around 800MB of RAM. I need to get a new hard drive, as the one in it is dead. I have never run OS X on the G3.
A 350 MHz iMac will be decently fast, especially since it will hardly ever need to swap. It has a nice, fast memory bus. I have a 300 MHz iMac (based on the original revision iMac motherboard) in a 1U case colocated in Europe, and it is more than fast enough to do tons of serving. Of course, since it's colocated, it's not running any sort of GUI. My desktop machine is an original iMac motherboard with a 600 MHz Sonnet running 10.3.7. All in all, iMacs are quick, good little machines.
John Klos
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