Trying out FreeBSD

[Lovechild]

I recently went to a Linux conference where I heard Poul-Henning Kamp speak about FreeBSD 5 and since I'm currently on Gentoo (which is supposedly a lot like FBSD) but getting a bit disappointed with the Linux Kernel, I was considering trying out FBSD.

Now I'm not asking for "hand holding"(tm) but I hear -CURRENT is horrible hard to work, or rather hard to get to work.

Give a newbie a hand, what is the easiest way to get a system up and running, and while I'm at it I want to compile as much as possible using ports - binaries just give me the creeps.


* side note *

Hi Schotty - I've come to haunt you :)

[frisco]

Give a newbie a hand, what is the easiest way to get a system up and running, and while I'm at it I want to compile as much as possible using ports - binaries just give me the creeps.


I suggest installing 4.8 and learning about cvs (to get source so you can compile everything yourself) and ports (to learn the system FreeBSD uses to let you easily handle compiling extra software for your system). Read through http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ - it has sections on cvs and packages. I'd write more but you asked for no handholding!

I'm curious - what disappoints you with the Linux kernel that you think FreeBSD might overcome?

And absolutely nothing to do with FreeBSD, but a really good friend of mine lives in Århus.

[soup4you2]

Now I'm not asking for "hand holding"(tm) but I hear -CURRENT is horrible hard to work, or rather hard to get to work.



updating is a breze.. once you get -RELEASE installed cvsup the latest sources then read /usr/src/UPDATING

i do have some hand holding articles but i cant give you the links for a few days...

[Lovechild]

/me cheers for handsholding all of a sudden... The FreeBSD installer is even worse than the old Debian installer, and this coming for a guy who can install LFS and Gentoo blindfolded.

The worse probem with the Linux kernel is Linus to be frank, he includes strange stuff that doesn't work properly, like Preemptive kernel, they have been looking for a bug that makes the system extremely laggy for ages now, it only affects certain systems.. and mine is one of them. The FBSD kernel just seems so much more solid in design than Linux.
I could go on for ages about the crappiness of some of the ideas Linus has had... but mostly the kernel just pisses me off, it's poorly maintained to be frank.

Life is to short for an OS which has a completely seperate kernel and userland... oh and FBSD5 just looks like a cool challenge :)

[soup4you2]

/me cheers for handsholding all of a sudden... The FreeBSD installer is even worse than the old Debian installer, and this coming for a guy who can install LFS and Gentoo blindfolded.



Actually once you get used to the bsd installers theirr beautiful... even the obsd one.. though that one was a little scary at first... i'm starting to get into scripted installs over pxe (fun fun)

but here's some links..

Installing FreeBSD
http://www.bsdhound.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=42

And here's a couple general first things to do links
http://www.bsdhound.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=44
http://www.bsdhound.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=51

[frisco]

Actually once you get used to the bsd installers theirr beautiful... even the obsd one.. though that one was a little scary at first...


I liked OpenBSD's install from the beginning b/c it was linear and the FAQ's provided a full walk through. Menu'd systems get confusing and i definitely don't want to click on anything. OpenBSD install always moves you forward, which to me feels a lot nicer - cleaner - than others which give too many options. Sure, you can skip steps in OpenBSD by going to shell, which is beautiful b/c there are two modes: newbie and ultra-advanced. Oh i love dualities.

If you want a wretched install, check out Solaris sometime. On x86, they're trying to match MS for how many reboots are necessary to install the system.