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Old 18th May 2011
shep shep is offline
Real Name: Scott
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Dry and Dusty
Posts: 1,503
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Oko posted while I was scripting a reply but I think we will both say the same thing.
You have 2 requirements that take a fair amount of processing
1) Converting Videos
2) Editing photos


Secure Internet surfing is somewhat of an oxymoron and paradoxically, the more obscure your operating system the more "security" you will have. The same applies to online shopping. Most vendors cater to encrypted "https" online ordering and I would suggest that the vendors web site is the weak link in the process. What you can do at your end is not save any passwords, encrypt your swap space and if wireless use wpa. When you talk to BSD users IMHO their focus is on the security of the entire system. Desktop users are sometimes concerned about the integrity and security of their own data and tend to want the most secure brower available. What is your focus when you talk about security?

One feature that you did not mention is if you will need flash video. My Online banking system uses it to generate confirmatory images. The BSD's need a linux based wrapper script for flash or use Gnash which is a cpu hog. If you search for security holes and flash you find that it is not very secure. If you want secure web surfing consider either not using flash or using a flash blocker browser plugin.

As far as hardware the video card will be the deciding factor and PC-BSD will will be the limiting factor. Both Mint and PC-BSD use xorg. I believe that Nvidea provides a FreeBSD/PC-BSD xorg driver so this would be your best bet. If you go AMD/ATI you should stick to the X3000 or earlier. I can't vouch for how well the Closed Source Nvidea drivers work and be aware that the xorg developers are reverse engineering the Nvidea driver. The xorg developers have been adding linux specific features to Intel and ATI drivers that have yet to be implemented in the BSD's although PC-BSD has put a developers bounty on KMS.

Any of the systems will word process, burn dvd/cd's and print although your choice of printer will matter.

I would be inclined to use 2 separate systems: one for converting videos and editing photos and feeding the videos to the LCD TV, and a less powerful system for surfing, printing, emails etc.

Last edited by shep; 18th May 2011 at 01:50 AM. Reason: Left out a period
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