From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jul 5 9: 1:26 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from ptavv.es.net (ptavv.es.net [198.128.4.29]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E7D0F37B406 for ; Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:01:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from oberman@ptavv.es.net) Received: from ptavv.es.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ptavv.es.net (8.10.1/8.10.1) with ESMTP id f65G1Kc13384; Thu, 5 Jul 2001 09:01:20 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <200107051601.f65G1Kc13384@ptavv.es.net> To: ftrk Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: which *BSD to choose? In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 04 Jul 2001 22:28:24 -0800." <3B41F171@webmail.uaf.edu> Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 09:01:20 -0700 From: "Kevin Oberman" 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 > Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 22:28:24 -0800 > From: ftrk > Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG > > I haven't used *BSD at all, but been using UNIX(Solaris) and LINUX > for awhile. However I have recently been reading lot about the > *BSD's and even downloaded Kevin Lai's paper from USENIX about the > comparison of SOLARIS, LINUX and FreeBSD. I would like to play with > it on my laptop which is kinda old, but I was wondering about > drivers for display chipsets etc: > Intel PIII Processor Most any x86 family chip or the AMD chips will work fine. Cyrix chips work, but seem to have a lot of problems and I would suggest you avoid them. > ATi Rage 128 display chipset(14" SXGA display) This works fine with XFree86 V4 (All BSDs and Linux use the common XFree86 for X windows support.) But the FreeBSD install procedure will install XFree86 V3.3.6 which does not support this, so skip the X windows installation section and install the XFree86 package under that portion of the installation procedure. Also install the user environment (Gnome, KDE or none) and window manager of your choice. > Xircom 10/100 cardbus PCMCIA card Bad news. FreeBSD V4 does not support CardBus PCcards. These cards are supported in the development version of FreeBSD and will be supported in V5.0 which may be out late this year. The maintainer is working on back-porting the support to V4, but there are no promises as to when/if this will be completed. If you need immediate support for this card, you might look at NetBSD. I'm pretty sure that it is supported there. > Internal Lucent Gold v50 modem( I am sure this wouldn't be supported:( ) Not officially supported at this time, although inclusion of the required software is being worked on and I expect it to show up fairly soon. If you check out the archives of questions, you will find a pointer to the FreeBSD code and I have seen several people report that it works, but this is not "official" support. > I would definitely like to use and support FreeBSD. However I am > unable to make up my mind as to which one will suit me and an > assessment of the three flavours. Would you have any pointers as to > where I can find some info? I am currently running a dualboot, with > winme(only because the internal modem is not supported:(and I can't > afford a external modem card right now ) and linux(redhat 7 which I > don't wanna use anymore since I have found things which I don't like > in it anymore). I am also interested in knowing the packages, like > compilers(like gcc, g77, perl) etc. Also does this come with any > crypto software? Pardon my ignorance, I tried to look around, but > couldn't find info on compilers etc.. See http://www.freebsd.org for a great deal of information. Especially, see the Handbook. Certainly gcc, g77 and Perl are part of FreeBSD. FreeBSD has a huge number of external tools, utilities, and games available in the "ports". This is the thing that makes FreeBSD stand out from the crowd. For any of the thousands of ports, installation is usually as easy as a cd to the port directory followed by 'make install'. FreeBSD is currently based on gcc 2.95.3. gcc v3.0 should be added to the ports tree soon. FreeBSD includes OpenSSL and OpenSSH in the base system. Many other crypto tools are also available. R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message