Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 02:22:24 -0700 From: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Newbies - "Handle me with care?" Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980622022224.007f9260@mx.serv.net>
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It's funny how Sue Blake and I have diametrically opposed philosophies regarding how newbies should deal with BSD: (1) She believes newbies should act with caution; not play with freebsd-current, be careful when trying new things, etc, for fear of screwing up your system. She told me not to EVER encourage anyone with less than 10 years experience to try freebsd-current, and stick with the stable release only. Sorry, Sue, that's not how it goes: (2) I believe it's *experienced* BSD people who should be cautious, because they have long-established systems to maintain, hundreds of customizations that could be lost, customers that could get pissed, etc, etc. Newbies should not only not just be careless, they should try anything and everything! Set aside a partition on your hard drive that you can "play with" without fear of losing anything important if you want to. Then throw caution to the wind and try everything! If you screw something up, you're a lucky person... you now have the opportunity to learn how to fix it, so if it happens again, you'll know what to do next time. Don't wait to build your own custom kernel; Do it immediately and see if it works! It's *easy* to recover from if it doesn't. Wipe your BSD partition on a regular basis and try different types of installations. Try the alpha releases of BSD and see how they work on your system. Try commands you've never seen before. Experiment. Play around. Make mistakes and learn how to fix those mistakes. If you don't, you will stay a newbie for a long time. So, oh list reader, which philosophy do *YOU* subscribe to? -- My web site starts at http://www.serv.net/~fewtch/index.html - lots of goodies for everyone, have a look if you have the time. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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