From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Sep 23 6:21:35 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-94-248-46.mmcable.com [24.94.248.46]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5DF6537B42B for ; Sun, 23 Sep 2001 06:21:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 5703 invoked by uid 100); 23 Sep 2001 13:21:31 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15277.57819.857186.684505@guru.mired.org> Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 08:21:31 -0500 To: Justin Davis Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: to install or not to install.. In-Reply-To: <10015200@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Justin Davis types: > Hi. I am currently running windows ME, which crashes all the time... I > built this computer about 6 months ago, here is a list of everything > Soundblaster motherboard > P3 900mhz > Creative dvd player > Yamaha 16x burner > sony usb mem stick reader/writer > GE Force 2 graphics card > > I want ME off of my computer, and am just going to format to do a clean > install. I'm not sure if i should try out FreeBSD, or install either win2k > pro, or XP. Any thoughts? This pc is used daily, and only rebooted about > twice a week. I'd just like what everyone wants, a stable,fast os. Thanks. Well, everyone else is recommending Win2k for desktop use, and I can't argue that that should be a lot better than ME. The licenseing stories I hear about XP are enough to make me wary of it. And of Win2k, for that matter. That said, I use FreeBSD for a desktop OS, because it is fast and stable. The one real downside is that the latest & greatest hardware may not work at all. This isn't because the FreeBSD developers are in any way inferior to the MS developers, but because the hardware manufacturers provide drivers for Windows, but not FreeBSD. In particular, your sony memory stick reader/writer may not work, and the yamaha cd burner could be problematical. FreeBSD does have drivers for those types of devices, but if the particular ones you have are either proprietary, or buggy, they may not work. The other downside is if you deal with people who feel that MS Office - usually, but other packages sometimes show up - are something everyone should have, interchanging documents with them can range from painfull to impossible. There may well be other areas where you will have problems, depending on what you want to do. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message