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Best fit BSD for legacy system
Hello,
I have been trying to find out which BSD to learn and hoped these forums could help. First, I have little to no modern experience outside Windows OS's. I have been testing linux for about a month and sometimes use my girlfriends macbook (OS 9) casually. I have a Pentium 2 or 3, with 128mb RAM. The HDD is 20gb so there are no worries there. I was wondering which BSD would be a good introduction (i.e. easy on a newbie) and that won't push the system. I will also be using a cross-over cable to share internet with either a XP or Linux (Xubuntu) computer. Any help is greatly appreciated. |
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Just avoid heavy weight stuff such as KDE, Gnome, Mozilla, and GNU Emacs and it shouldn't matter very much.
A Pentium III 500Mhz (Katmai) isn't to bad for running the *BSDs btw.
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My Journal Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''. |
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I'm running OpenBSD 4.3 on a 500mhz machine with icewm. I do have more ram (384megs) and love it. I have faster machines, but I just enjoy this setup.
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I used to run OpenBSD on a P1 @ 133Mhz, then an upgraded K6 @ 333 Mhz, that systems was replaced with a P2.
This message was routed by the aforementioned system.. |
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1) A *BSD "desktop." 2) A *BSD firewall/router/gateway/whateverelse 3) A *BSD server eg: web, email, dns, irc, etc 4) Other Hardware requirements will have to be synced with the above. My introduction to the *BSDs came by way of setting up No. 2. For that, a 486 DX4-100/16Mb RAM/1Gb HDD running OpenBSD 3.5 was enough. More than enough, even, for the task it was supposed to do at that time. Good luck and have fun.
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BSD, Eggdrop and the random Blah |
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Hmmm... My first experience with FreeBSD (5.x release) was on ancient p-I with 233 MHz CPU and 96MB RAM. XORG + wmaker.
I admit it was not the best choice but it worked, and I learned a lot about the system. P.S. I never tried OBSD or NBSD so I can't compare. |
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I know the system will handle Xfce as I had Xubuntu running on it for a while, but decided to put it on a laptop instead as I didn't have a monitor after moving (I do now.). |
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My introduction was a PC-BSD 1.0RC and FreeBSD 6.0-Release install on a Pentium III 500Mhz/384MB RAM with KDE 3.4.x and Blackbox 0.7x.x (if versioning memory serves) functioning as a desktop.
Which also served as a playtime introduction to server'ish features using FreeBSD 6.1/6.2 and SSH. And as a test machine for NetBSD Then finally settled as a general purpose file server running OpenBSD since 3.9 ;-) If you can find it, you might want to up the RAM a little bit for desktop usage.
__________________
My Journal Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''. |
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EvilGardenGnome, with the ram you have, I wouldn't use kde or gnome. As you mentioned xfce, it would be fine, icewm, or any of the *box would serve you well, imho
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Okay,
Having read the posts and looked at some more information I think OpenBSD is the one for me right now. I can always change later. Now, my other question is what is the difference between a Windows Manager like the *boxes and a Desktop Environment like Xfce? My understanding is that the DE's are more like Windows and Gnome, but I'm really at a loss for how WM's compare to that. Is a WM just a collection of windows? Do you do all the interaction through terminal? I'll continue looking for information online, but any hints/links are greatly appreciated. |
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http://xwinman.org/ As for the choices you mention, XFCE lies closer to the KDE/GNOME end of the continuum, & fluxbox/blackbox lies closer to cwm. The default window manager configured on OpenBSD is fvwm(1), however cwm is also installed. Given only 128MB RAM, I would recommend staying away from KDE/GNOME, however you can likely run them, but you will also see the system work at keeping up with the eye candy. XFCE is most likely a better choice, but personally, I prefer fluxbox which is quite popular amongst many on these forums. The best advice anyone can give is to urge you to experiment by installing different window managers & choose for yourself. Quote:
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http://openbsd.org/faq/index.html ...as well as OpenBSD's application system (known as packages & ports system...): http://openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html Good luck! |
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I started on OpenBSD building gateways & mail servers and expanded from there. |
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