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Ghettobox

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 5, 2006
Messages
470
Hey guys. Me again. I had Ubuntu running for some time on my test box (P3 866, 384MB , 40 Gig WDcaviar, intel 810 sound/vid, generic NIC) it acted really funny sometimes. CD's would skip when I tried anything else. WOuld randomly lose stuff off the desktop. Sometimes Firefox wouldnt load up. I tried Zenwalk for awhile. XFCE didnt seem to like my 810 vid card too much (neither do I). Tried Vector which ran fine, but It would take me ten tries to get a install to finish, choking on various areas of the install.

I had been looking for a lean/quick OS for this POS, and the next one I build to replace it. I have done some cruising and comparing. I looked at BSD in all its forms, and was a bit intimidated by its complexity. I have installed Linux planty of times, but short of Gentoo you dont get as indepth IMHO as in a BSD install. Not to mention they use differnet editors, different commands etc. Well I downloaded PCbsd. A FreeBSD system with what I can tell simply adds a Anaconda style installer to it, and detects EVERYTHING. This thing runs faster than it has any business doing. install was easier than a windows XP install, and took about 30min's . It has KDE preconfigured, a killer "package" system called PBI with a decent amount of necessary app's.( No open office.org in ENGLISH I can find?) Currently have Opera 8.5 runnning with Flash Plugins, The Gimp, XMMS, aMule, Gaim etc. Being A FreeBSD system you still have the prots tree available for anything not PBI released as of yet....so I need to do some reading.

What really set me back was the effortless install, the dead nuts rock STABLE environment, and the incredible speed this thing runs with. Downloads average 450kbs...vs. 250kbs for my Ubuntu install, and the 120kbs average theis box got running XP. Web pages open almost as fast as I blink, and I cant force it too crash. I can run a CD, the browser, pop into Konsole, have a Gaim Chat going..and everything not only stays running, it runs FLAWLESSLY.

I really just wanted to say thanks to you guys. People had pointed me in various directions..all valid and a great HELP. On the "tell us why your linux distro is best" thread someone mentioned BSD, I did some poking around and found the DesktopBSD, and pcBSD listed, and have officially dumped Linux ...for now at least.

Ghettobox
 
yeah, FreeBSD rules :D

and PCbsd is really nice because it showcases what you can do with it -- and makes it easy to do stuff with it.
 
[H]EMI_426 said:
FreeBSD is pretty nifty. 6.0 fixed all my major gripes with 5.x.
Click to expand...

I think this is a prime example of why going from 5 to 6 so early was a good idea. ;)
 
HHunt said:
I think this is a prime example of why going from 5 to 6 so early was a good idea. ;)
Click to expand...
Hah. Yeah. Someone asked me what I thought of 6.0. I said it was 5.x done right, or what 5.x should have been the first time around.
 
I cant stress enough how impressed I am. Not only is it so silly stable, its pretty decent at not eating resources. Its not as light as Ubuntu according to my Desklets apps on Ubuntu, and the system load function here on my BSD install with KDE. Was tunning at about 50-60 megs in memory, but pegging out the CPU with every webpage I opened. BSD is eating about 230megs..but CPU usage stays below 20% damn near no matter what.

My only concern is what newer hardware is supported? Like PCIexpress graphics? Newer chipsets..say the Nvidia Nforce 4 ? Or the Via equivalent? I expected EVERYTHING to support the Intel 810 chipset...just wondering what the status is right now? One more addition. I did find Open Office in PBI format..in english.

I am still on the honeymoon with BSD, and still have to figure out how to get my printer working...but it has simply buried Linux for this box at least. I cant imagine how snappy it would be on something like a newer Opteron, with a gig of memory.

Ghettobox
 
Know that the *BSDs and Linux handle memory usage differently. FreeBSD may look like it's "using" a lot more memory, but most tools don't know how to handle the different "types" of memory usage FreeBSD reports the status of (active/inactive/wired/cached/buffered/free) vs. Linux's relatively limited memory-reporting facilities. I don't know which one is better, but at least FreeBSD gives you a much better idea of what's going on.

The newer hardware is generally listed pretty well in the HCL on FreeBSD's website. You might have to hunt around for it, but it's there. I never had any problems with i810 stuff; my domain lives on a FreeBSD 6.0/i815/Celeron 1.4 system.

Printing...Just install CUPS, and I suggest overriding the base system printing tools with CUPS.

You'll want to set up an /etc/make.conf for building things like CUPS and such with build options (you can pass the options to the build, but if you plan on upgrading anything you probably want to go the make.conf route) like:

Code: 
NO_LPR=true
CUPS_OVERWRITE_BASE=yes

There's lots to learn, but once you get it all figured out you'll probably wish you'd found FreeBSD earlier.
 
What a Coincidence. About a week ago I too decided to "scrap" linux in favor of BSD. SuSE just never handled as well as I liked and no other Linux Distro I fooled with gave me what I wanted out of the box. PC-BSD was a beacon of light for me. Light, yet rich with features. That and I truely enjoy the PBI system which is, on a personal level, much favored over the .rpm. In short I am happy you are finding as much success with BSD as I am. I am currently attempting to figure out how to work the PBI system so I can start porting over new more up-to-date releases of some programs. *Hugs PC-BSD and Vmware*
 
I'm going to be tossing PC-BSD on my laptop (IBM Thinkpad T43) soon but there was a few things I'm concerned about:

1) WiFi support?
2) Bluetooth support?

I imagine newer hardware support in 6.0 is good and should detect most of what this laptop has. The two above though are my only concern. I should probably check the HCL but I'm too lazy :\.
 
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