Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 16:47:52 -0700 From: lwatkins1@juno.com (Larry E. Watkins) To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Looking for help Message-ID: <19970726.164753.12062.0.lwatkins1@juno.com>
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Hi -- I've been stimulated to write because I just received the "FreeBSD News" and have been reminded that I'm missing out on too much. I have a dual boot IBM compatible PC with FreeBSD installed on it's own hard drive. I'm a long-time computer user, ex-programmer, quite familiar with DOS and Windows and although I've had FreeBSD for nearly 2 years I'm pretty much a novice at it and Unix in general -- just the kind of calls for help you probably like to get I'll bet :-). I've learned enough about my BSD system to complete a Perl course and have done some extensive Perl development using vi. I've also learned how to get files onto diskette so that I can transfer them between my Win95 machine and my BSD machine. My Windows machine is my Internet connection -- I've not gotten BSD to operate with my modem, and frankly wouldn't know what to do with it once I did get connected. So, basically, I've been using my nice BSD machine to simulate a big dumb DOS box and little else. I need to get out of the rut. I'd started to install XWindows so that I could have a windows-like environment but apparently when I initially installed FreeBSD I neglected to install everything -- XWindows wouldn't install because it said some of the required directories are missing. I started to reinstall FreeBSD but the warning message says it's possible I could lose everything in the process and although I don't have a heck of a lot to lose, there is enough working that I chose not to risk the reinstall. What I'd like help with to begin with is to in getting my machine connected to the Internet and learning what I can do with it once I'm there -- on my Windows machine I use ftp, telnet, Netscape and MS Internet Explorer, and e-mail. So, I need some direction and someone to give me a shove. If I could get connected properly perhaps someone there could connect to me and take a look at my system and let me know what I can do to make it hum. I can see the handwriting on the wall and it's spelling FreeBSD -- as time goes by the less I can use Microsoft the happier I'll be. Looking forward to hearing from someone whenever you have the time. Larry Watkins Sacramento
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