B. Mitchell wrote:
William Roddy wrote:
Has anyone tried PC-BSD? Does anyone know if that's a good place to
start, for those of us who don't know FreeBSD?
I just gave it a shot, today. First of all, I am not a big fan of KDE
(or Gnome for that matter), but it should provide a usable environment
for those that use a GUI day-to-day.
Second, the native packaging system does not support checksums on the
downloaded binaries. Ack. I would suggest sticking to the ports tree
(which you should be doing anyway, imho) for installing software.
I am glad to see it doesn't install BASH by default. I say this not
because I have anything _against_ BASH, but because other BSDs don't
use BASH by default. It good to know that they have not changed that
first shell experience on BSD.
Finally, PC-BSD seemed to detect and make use of most of my hardware
on the test box. Nothing exciting in there, so not much of a surprise.
The OS seems reasonably capable, albeit underdeveloped. Despite having
the hesitation to use a 'real' BSD, William, I would suggest just
diving in to Free or NetBSD (OpenBSD has never really been the most
'user friendly' BSD - some quirks _will_ scare you). If anything
hurts, just think, "it builds character!" =D
Thanks for the extremely informative reply.
As a brief explanation, I'm disabled and a senior citizen, and I'm in
and out of the VA hospital quite a lot, so diving into something
complex, however tempting, is not something I can comfortably do.
However, I wish I could experience BSD because I hear so much about it.
Since I don't have spare machines, and I used Linux as my primary
operating system (started using it prior to my intense illnesses, so
I've had little start) and use it for more than just a toy box, I can't
risk disabling my machines.
I'm seriously considering becoming a Buddhist, so I can work toward
reincarnating as an IT.
You've given me a lot to think about. Thank you for the time you spent
replying.
William
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