Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 17:18:41 -0500 From: "Doug Reynolds" <mav@wastegate.net> To: "Bob Giesen" <BobGiesen@earthlink.net>, "Kris Kennaway" <kris@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "Douglas R. Spindler" <spindler@dnai.com>, "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Kris Kennaway" <kris@obsecurity.org> Subject: Re: A question from a convert from Windows to FreeBSD Message-ID: <20020123221653.0B2364844F@wastegate.net> In-Reply-To: <20020122161741.A7573@citusc17.usc.edu>
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On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 16:17:41 -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote: >If we're comparing FreeBSD installations with Windows installations, I >spent the entire weekend (literally!) last week trying to install >Win98 on my K6-2/550 with quite standard hardware. Win98 would boot >from CD but refuse to load the ATAPI drivers to read the rest of the >CD; the Promise IDE controller wasn't detected out of the box, so I >had to transfer my HDs to the motherboard controllers in order to >install onto them once I got the CD media to work; the motherboard >needed me to download 4 drivers in order for it to work without >crashing; and my graphics card (Matrox dual-head G400) didn't work out >of the box, and still causes Windows 98 to BSOD at startup every 2 out >of 3 startups no matter what driver magic I've tried. Then Windows >Update suggested a new driver for my intel fxp ethernet card which >totally bodged it up, and I had to do major system file surgery to >recover a working driver and stop it from continually trying to >install the broken one. I had to disable power management because the >default settings cause the system to hang when it tries to suspend. >Then I found last night that the FAT16 partition I created using Win98 >FDISK was created right in the middle of my UFS partition which was >already on the disk. > >If I didn't have such expertise with Windows administration there is >no way in hell I'd have been able to get this thing running. I can >hardly think of more things which could have gone wrong with the >installation to have made it more difficult. > >By contrast, FreeBSD installed and runs on the same system without a >single hitch. all that i can say is you had some really bad luck man. Windows 98SE had been really good to me; however, a lot of super socket 7 & early slot A boards have the APM problems. and the UFS & FAT16 thing is why I keep my operating systems on seperate systems or at least seperate drives. FreeBSD 4.0, however, did install great on my k6-266 all-in-one board, except the ata33 (or was it ata66) gave those weird ata0 errors, so i changed boards. 4.0 on my old 5x86-133 with 28 megs of ram gave me trouble (lockup on boot install) until i went into visual config and disabled a bunch of things, then it worked great. I will use Win98 until everything needs to be ran on Windows XP, and when that happens, i am repartitioning and leaving win98 on, and run X and freebsd for my main desktop, because i refusing to run an OS that will only let you change your hardware configuration 10 times, and then having to call micro$oft and get their permission for the 11th. that is, because i change my stuff often, and it would make a lot more sense to limit piracy by cpu and chipset and ram, then by ethernet cards, sound cards, etc etc --- doug reynolds | the maverick | mav@wastegate.net PGP Public Key Fingerprint: 6E7B 9993 B503 6D45 E33A 2019 26E5 C1DB To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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