From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 17 02:39:44 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CABBB16A4CE for ; Tue, 17 May 2005 02:39:44 +0000 (GMT) Received: from proxy.ddcom.co.jp (proxy.ddcom.co.jp [211.121.191.163]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B911843D78 for ; Tue, 17 May 2005 02:39:43 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rees@ddcom.co.jp) Received: (qmail 28269 invoked by alias); 17 May 2005 02:51:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO matthew) (10.10.10.11) by mail.ddcom.local with SMTP; 17 May 2005 02:51:03 -0000 Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 11:39:40 +0900 From: Joel To: questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-Id: <20050517103652.2933.REES@ddcom.co.jp> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-2022-JP" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Becky! ver. 2.00.06 Subject: Re: FreeBSD or NetBSD on older hardware (MMX) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 02:39:44 -0000 On Tue, 17 May 2005 01:02:42 +0800 FreeBSD MailingLists wrote > I fished out an old laptop out of my closet. > It is a Pentium 233 MMX w/ 64MB Ram and 12G HD > I am thinking about setting up a small station for browsing the web. > Which would perform better on such a system? FreeBSD or NetBSD? > > I know that this is a mailing list for FreeBSD users, but I am hoping > that you will be objective and give me a suggestion based purely on > performance. Performance? Which OS may be the wrong question. If you want it to browse the web, add RAM. If possible, add 512MB. I'd ask how much experience you have with the command line. netBSD (and openBSD) will require much more work on the command line than freeBSD. I'd also ask whether you need multibyte text. If so, freeBSD's support of locales is better than netBSD's or openBSD's. I understand that it is possible to get a window manager working with only 64 MB of RAM, but you would want to use one of the bare bones, dead simple ones, _not_ Gnome or KDE. Even if you can raise the RAM to 512 MB, you'll still probably prefer to use a simpler window manager. If you really know what you are doing, you can get better performance on small systems with netBSD. But if you knew that much, you wouldn't be asking. Pick one, go for it, expect to learn a lot. As much as possible, avoid compiling on a box that slow. Use binary packages when you can. Expect compiles to take days, not hours. With only 64MB, don't be surprised if a moderately large source package takes more than a week to compile. -- Joel Rees digitcom, inc. 株式会社デジコム Kobe, Japan +81-78-672-8800 ** **