Re: [Sheflug] BSD

["Netsonic" <netsonic [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jonathan" <jonathan [at] sirtis.org.uk>
To: <shef-lug [at] list.sheflug.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Sheflug] BSD


> Netsonic wrote:
>
> > Is anybody here aware of a 'merging' of the 3 BSD systems out there ?
> >
> > I seem to remember reading something about it on a website once, that
plans
> > were in the making for them to be eventually merged into a single
> > distribution.
> >
> > I can't find the page anymore though.
>
> It's the usual garbage from the same people who say BSD is dead or Linux
> is being bought by Microsoft.
>
> The 3 main BSDs quite happily co-exist and will continue to do so for
> many moons, I am sure.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jonathan
>

Far be it from that as I remember Jonathan, I'm sure it was a BSD support
page of some kind. If I do come across it again, I'll definitely post the
link.

The actual reason I asked is because I've been snooping around the BSD sites
recently, pondering one of them for my new laptop (Dell Inspiron 8500).

Its got a fast enough processor and an obscene amount of memory,  to do any
compiling thats required, but as is often the case with pre-built machines,
there is only ever officially support for windoze, so the issue of drivers
rears its ugly head again.

I've just seen the video drivers for FreeBSD on the Nvidia site, so thats
one thing less to worry about (Im assuming that with a little tweaking, they
would probably work with any of the BSD's).

But I'm sure I'll have a whole raft of questions over drivers and
compatibility issues over the coming weeks, depending on which one I choose.

The last one I used (Which was on my desktop at the time) was FreeBSD. It
installed Ok after my getting used to some of the terminology it used,
XFree86 compiled from source with no issues, and I eventually got KDE
compiled from source to work fairly smoothly too.

I think Im going to have to try and install over the network this time
though, if thats possible, as my blank CDs have just ran out :)

(If anyone here has any experience of BSD on such a laptop, any pointers
would be much appreciated).

Incidentally, my thoughts on the partition layout come from what I generally
use for Linux which are:

/hda1    - 32 Mb boot partition
/hda2    - 512 Mb swap partition
/hda3    - remaining disk space for root

I know about the arguments for having a separate /home partition and all,
but this layout is nice and simple and has always worked for me.

Any comments ??

Steve.

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