Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 20:50:51 -0800 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: dom@wirespeed.org.uk, "John Maclean" <clapham.99@tiscali.co.uk> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Message-ID: <200401052050.51771.wes@softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <200401060049.25439.dom@wirespeed.org.uk> References: <000501c3d3ec$96a898c0$86932d50@HP25268139141> <200401060049.25439.dom@wirespeed.org.uk>
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On Monday 05 January 2004 04:49 pm, Dominic Marks wrote: > On Tuesday 06 Jan 2004 12:32 am, John Maclean wrote: > > Sirs, > > > > I have read our site http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/index.html as > > I am interested in learning C on a UNIX type platform. Could you > > tell me please if FreeBsd would run on a Athlon Xp based laptop? > > It will almost certainly run like a dream. Congratulations on your > excellent choice of learning environment :-) Let me temper that a bit with the phrase "probably." FreeBSD runs quite nicely on Athlon XP processors, I'm writing this reply on: FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT #5: Mon Dec 29 13:11:15 PST 2003 rootb@zaphod.softweyr.com:/usr/obj/big/current/src/sys/ZAPHOD Preloaded elf kernel "/boot/kernel/kernel" at 0xc0884000. Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0 CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+ (1692.38-MHz 686-class CPU) Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x662 Stepping = 2 Features=0x383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CM OV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE> AMD Features=0xc0400000<AMIE,DSP,3DNow!> (That's the output of the FreeBSD 'dmesg' command, which dumps the kernel message buffer. This is the text you see scroll by as FreeBSD boots. Note the FreeBSD version and the CPU identification. Laptop vendors, on the other hand, love to throw in various weird bits of hardware, and being a laptop, you can just toss them out and stuff in something that does work. Chances are 99.99% your laptop will boot and run fine, but you may find a couple of goodies in it that don't work, such as internal modems, and maybe the sound if your machine is very new. If so, be patient, FreeBSD will catch up (generally in a few months). Or pitch in and help make your special features work! > NB: The freebsd-questions list would have been more appropriate, but I > can see why you picked out freebsd-arch, I reccomend consulting the > FreeBSD Handbook for a run down of how to install FreeBSD and > descriptions of the purposes of the various mailing lists. You can > access this at http://www.uk.freebsd.org/handbook/. Enjoy. Yes, I've redirected this reply to -questions so the gang there can chime in and help you too. -- Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket? Wes Peters wes@softweyr.com
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