DaWei

No, I haven't installed FreeBSD, yet. You know me, though, I could write it up anyway . The way I made my choice for first candidate was as follows: I threw out Net BSD for no discernible reason (I haven't consulted my therapist for possible unconcious motives). I then flipped a coin, and Open BSD won. I have not measured the coin for bias.

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stevengs

Quite colorfully I would imagine.
Your unconscious motives apparently command vast wisdom. The developement of NetBSD seems to be in a state of stagnation for quite some time now. I haven't heard much good come of that project lately.

The rest is just a decision between a blue blowfish or a red demon in Chuck Taylor's, right? :p

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Ooble

OpenBSD isn't really meant for Aunt Gertie... it focuses on security. It's for servers. If you want a *nix Auntie can use, check out Beatrix. Or something like Fedora, I guess.

I find it funny that you expect to hammer Next throughout the install when Windows XP requires you to hit Enter, F8, and then Enter some more before you even get a GUI.

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DaWei

Actually, XP requires you to read the prompt before you get to the GUI. They throw back-asswards things at you to see if you have at least two wrinkles in your brain before they ask for your time zone. Since the initial purpose of this exercise was to look at BSD versions (and was stated as such), I wonder why Linux thangys like Fedora keep popping up. I would also like someone to explain to me why an OS can be for servers and security and otherwise useless (aside from the developers concentrating their attention on people other than Aunt Gertie). Looky here:
All emphases are THEIRS, except this one.

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Ooble

In that case, they've definitely got their priorities screwed.

If I recall correctly (and I probably don't), you were going to review many different types of system. Linux was one of them, wasn't it? Be fair: review them on their own merits, and not on what you expect them to be.

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DaWei

I'm with AA, read the posts . Review them on their merits? If I don't use your merits, I'm unfair? I'm the reviewer in this case, and I'm reviewing the applicability to the general, non-technical, desktop market. You know the one. The one everyone bitches about not being able to grab their fair share of. Did you think I'd review it for my next dishwasher control mechanism or intravenous infusion pump? :eek:

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Ooble

'Tis a fair point. Well, I enjoyed the review anyway, so all I can really say is "keep at it."

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nnxion

Well in the beginning you talked about disk geometry, was that just an old documentation? I remember having to specify the same for Gentoo. When I saw that, I quit Linux and tried FreeBSD.

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DaWei

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, The 'disk geometry' quote is from the Open BSD installation document. I'm not questioning the value of knowing what one is doing and making the most of the disk in terms of partitions and file systems. I'm suggesting that a path of installation that proceeds to a workable conclusion without such knowledge would be beneficial to the utility of an OS, and thus increase its marketability to the mass of non-technical users. The installation process for Open BSD is nearly there. Truly, the only thing I had to learn was how fdisk and disklabel work. The mini-kernel has the man pages for those on tap. Truthfully, after reading lots of posts regarding the setting up of Linux (various distributions), and the thread where the OP was trying to get FreeBSD up, I was flabbergasted at the ease of installation.

I have since installed it on a second disk added to my Windows machine. I then installed a multiboot program called GAG, which will boot up to 9 OSes. Now when I boot, I see a graphical screen (ugly, but what the hey) that tells me I can boot into XP by pressing the '1' key, or Open BSD by pressing the '2' key.

I have yet to make time for fetching ports and packages, but I'm looking forward to doing that and seeing how useful the system might be to Aunt Gertie and her friends.

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DaWei

Woohoo! Browsing from BSD in Firefox. Text sucks, though.

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers