From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Aug 1 13:02:40 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA04409 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 1 Aug 1996 13:02:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from freenet.hamilton.on.ca (main.freenet.hamilton.on.ca [199.212.94.65]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA04382 for ; Thu, 1 Aug 1996 13:02:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from james.freenet.hamilton.on.ca (james.freenet.hamilton.on.ca [199.212.94.66]) by freenet.hamilton.on.ca (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA06094; Thu, 1 Aug 1996 16:02:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from ac199@localhost) by james.freenet.hamilton.on.ca (8.7.5/8.7.3) id QAA06198; Thu, 1 Aug 1996 16:04:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 1 Aug 1996 16:04:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Tim Vanderhoek To: Brian Hasden cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD In-Reply-To: <3200C566.1D83@afn.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 1 Aug 1996, Brian Hasden wrote: > What is FreeBSD? From reading about your web site I was under the idea > that it can make my computer into a "http://www.whatever.com" thing. Is > that true? If so does the software work on standard computers e.g. Packard > Bell 486 DX2/66? FreeBSD is an operating system, in the same way that DOS, Win95, and OS/2 are operating systems. It, by itself, does make your computer into an "http://www.whatever.com" thing. Things such as "http://www.whatever.com" are call urls (Uniform Resource Locators). All that urls do is specify a place on the Internet to find information, and a way of talking to this place from where you are (a protocal). You can run a webserver on FreeBSD. A webserver is what answers to the "http" protocal. If you connect to the Internet via a PPP link (from an ISP - Internet Service Provider) than you can become something like http://dyna-07.on.sympatico.on.ca Where the dyna-07 part changes everytime you connect to the Internet (via your ISP). For a little more money, you can often buy a static IP address so that the dyna-07 part stays the same everytime you login. This can actually be done with other operating systems, too. The main attraction (to Windows users, anyways) about FreeBSD is that it is a UNIX-type operating system and that it is distributed with full source code available. -- Outnumbered? Maybe. Outspoken? Never! tIM...HOEk