Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 23:59:26 -0500 From: Lucas Bergman <iceberg@pobox.com> To: Nathan Nielsen <NateDogg@vtc.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Installing FreeBSD Locally. Message-ID: <20001011235926.A84935@comp04.prc.uic.edu> In-Reply-To: <000701c033fe$6d6c55a0$f5948ad0@computer1nn>; from NateDogg@vtc.net on Wed, Oct 11, 2000 at 08:42:20PM -0700 References: <000701c033fe$6d6c55a0$f5948ad0@computer1nn>
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> Hi. I am interested in downloading FreeBSD, and I was wondering that > if I could just download it to my hard disk and istall it from > there Absolutely. It's big, though, so I'd advise having a cable modem, DSL, T1, or other fast connection to download it. If not, CDs are pretty cheap ($40 `official' version from cdrom.com; a watered-down, `unofficial' version is only $8 from cheapbytes.com... I buy the official CDs to support the project, but I understand that some people can't). Installing FreeBSD is covered in the FreeBSD Handbook at http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/install.html In short, download the contents of ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/4.1.1-RELEASE into c:\freebsd. (Better yet, use a mirror close to you; check the Handbook for sites.) Strictly speaking, you only need the `bin', `floppies', and `manpages' directories and could install the rest later, but there's something to be said for getting a lot in one chunk. Grab everything but `packages' and possibly `src' if you have the space/bandwidth. Then, use RAWRITE.EXE to make boot floppies (this is in the Handbook), boot off them, and you're off. > and also without wiping out my present version of Windows. This is more complicated. FreeBSD should go on a separate hard disk partition from Windows (or a separate hard disk, if you like). The problem is, right now you probably have only one hard disk partition occupied by Windows, and shrinking that partition to free up some space without damaging its data is not an easy thing. The `official' way to do it is get Partition Magic (proprietary software; search the web). There are free tools to do this too, and people have had varying degrees of success with them. No guarantees, though; in particular, I don't know how the free tools handle FAT32, as I haven't had to care about Windows for a number of years. If you have problems, just check the Handbook (see a pattern developing?) and write back to the list if you need more help. > I like the sound of FreeBSD, but I would also like to keep my > Windows ME. Outstanding. Most users of FreeBSD (or any other Unix) on Intel machines started out this way, including myself. Of course, back then it was DOS 6/Windows 3.1 that I kept on a separate partition. :) Lucas To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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