From owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 8 19:51:00 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B8FAA16A4CE for ; Wed, 8 Sep 2004 19:51:00 +0000 (GMT) Received: from smtp-send.myrealbox.com (smtp-send.myrealbox.com [192.108.102.143]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7E1EF43D48 for ; Wed, 8 Sep 2004 19:51:00 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mimerki@myrealbox.com) Received: from 192.168.0.3 mimerki [24.113.45.167]$ on Novell NetWare via secured & encrypted transport (TLS); Wed, 08 Sep 2004 13:51:01 -0600 From: Marcia Barrett Nice To: "hide110" , freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 13:06:52 -0700 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.2 References: <200409072315.i87NFbcx005721@in.flite.net> In-Reply-To: <200409072315.i87NFbcx005721@in.flite.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200409081306.53032.mimerki@myrealbox.com> Subject: Re: General Unix Learning X-BeenThere: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Gathering place for new users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 08 Sep 2004 19:51:00 -0000 On Tuesday 07 September 2004 12:15 pm, hide110 wrote: > Please forgive me if this is not the right place to turn but, I figure you > all would be able to share your wisdom with me. > > I am a Windows user and I've hated it for the past few years. The Unix > experience I have accrued has mainly been working from a shell account; > nothing really in detail about the actual operating system or installation. > I have considered FreeBSD & Linux, but really, for a desktop system do you > guys think it's viable for a nearly pure unix newbie to tinker around with > BSD? Or would it be easier to start with Linux & eventually port over to > BSD? > > Normally I'd take my own advice (if you want to use BSD, use BSD, if you > want to use Linux at the end of the day, use that) but I'm just trying to > be practical with all learning curves taken into consideration. > > My deepest apologies if I should not be asking something like this here. > But any replies would be terribly appreciated. > Everyone was a newbie once upon a time. I've been using FBSD for my desktop OS for ... four years now I think. Before that, I knew next to nothing about unix. Personally, I found BSD easier to learn than Linux. Things on my BSD installs tended to just work, so there was less pulling out of hair over what was wrong and if it could be fixed than I've had with Linux. My suggestion would be to try installing BSD if that's what you want to run, and play around with it. If you decide it's not making you happy, there are lots of other options. Marci