hey ax25nut;
actually I haven't successfully gotten it to install...
every time I put it on usb (dd), it screws up my usb badly.
and it always stops booting on the lappy...

I can't risk putting BSD on any desktop PC as it seems it cant/wont install on a logical partition?
I cant risk BSD wiping out my hdd partitions; so for now it's on indefinite hold
Maybe when BSD becomes more mature I will try it
or when I get a PC that doesn't have important stuff on it...

ax25nut; have you tried the new Bible Edition I made?
http://multidistro.com/NFLUXNEW/SQ4/ubuntu.html

So, as soon as I get another used PC I will be trying one or more of the BSD's
thx

Hmmm....you might want to simply omit the usb install and make room on the hard disk. No need to eliminate your other installs for that, unless you already have four primary partitions. I once installed pc-bsd to usb stick by simply using uNetBootin in windoze to burn the iso file (not the img file) to the usb stick. I think I still have it. PC-BSD doesn't boot as fast on that usb stick as other stuff does, but it's still usable. Again, your mileage may vary. I have a few installs on the PC-BSD forum that detail how I got my installations to boot. Look up my username (same as here). That might be helpful for your install, but then again, if you're doing a usb install you might have problems. I think my usb stick worked because I formatted it fat32, with boot flag on. Then I used uNetbootin to install to it. Try that if you haven't already and let me know what happens. I've never gotten any multi-boot functionality on usb stix, although I know others have. I didn't use grub on the stik, just a straight install. Enjoy!

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I've gotten FreeBSD working fine now. I'm using Xfce. Very nice. I know that you have to install it to a primary partition, but it is a very nice operating system. Very fast, stable, tons of ports, you have the option of using packages, but I don't, I just install everything from ports. The ports are updated very regularly, and so is everything else. A little more reading to do to figure everything out than some Linux distributions (like Ubuntu, Debian), but it doesn't take very long and it's not very difficult stuff to learn. So far I'd definitely say I prefer it to Linux.

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prdeltoid;
thats great
The only thing stopping me is...
i dont have a free primary partition...yet

Tell me; what kernel does BSD use?
I ask because I want to know if you will try to make a livecd from your system so I can testdrive it live?

Each *BSD project uses their own. They all descend from one to two common ancestors, but the various *BSD projects have had nearly twenty years now to distinguish their kernels from each other.

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but can one use a linux kernel source to compile bsd kernel?

No, they're very different.
EDIT:
http://www.freebsd.org/features.html

Well, is there any bsd which will

1) either install to logical partition?
Or
2) not endanger my Linux installs?

Thats why i haven't installed it...
I would lose everything if I misinterpreted something
and BSD took out my Linux partitions(many)

I just need some assurance that i won't lose my data...
Thats why I wish some *BSD had a liveUSB to testdrive...
thx

All I know of is:
http://www.freesbie.org/
and:
http://www.pcbsd.org/

I don't know what the differences are between FreeBSD and PC-BSD, as far as installation options.

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Well, I guess the correct answer is "modified UCB 4.3BSD" kernels...but each is modified by the respective project.

If I'm not mistaken, the history is as follows: NetBSD started from 4.3BSD (1993). FreeBSD started from the 4.3BSD code after it was ported to the intel 386 platform (386BSD) (1993). OpenBSD forked from NetBSD (1995). DragonflyBSD forked from FreeBSD (2003). The remaining ones (PC-BSD, DesktopBSD, OliveBSD, etc...) are all basically built on top of one of the three early BSD's.

I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones that come to mind.

OpenBSD's bsd.rd installer (the CDROM or when run from a live system), can install to a usb drive without touching anything else...but it won't be a pretty graphical installer or even a pretty graphical system until you've set it up the rest of the way...

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Check it out
maybe I found an answer for livecd...
http://www.ghostbsd.org/182/

1,547mb dvd though, do you got to install all of it?
we'll see

linus72,

Why don't you just put in another HD in your desktop, even a little 3gigger would work fine. Then you can install BSD without modifying your main HD. I would unplug your main HD first, just so you don't mess something up during install (optional). Once you get BSD installed, plug in your main HD again and setup grub to chainload to the second HD. This is your easiest solution.

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AND FYI, for the future, always remember that some OS's can only be installed to primary (like MacOS_x86 and BSD). So if you ever setup a desktop again, make 3 primary's and don't install linux/windows on them, save them for BSD. Then the 4rth would be your extended, and 5-15 would be your logical for linux/win. Don't put swap/boot on primary either, just reserve them for BSD.
/dev/sda1 pri 20g (or whatever size)
/dev/sda2 pri 30g (or whatever size)
/dev/sda3 pri 40g (or whatever size)
/dev/sda4 extended
/dev/sda5 log 4G swap
/dev/sda6 log 4G boot (i install a small distro here (as a sort of utility boot OS to fix things), and use as main /boot (grub here, chainloads to other grubs/BSD))
/dev/sda7 log 300G home/storage
/dev/sda8 log 16G linux/win
/dev/sda9 log 16G linux/win
/dev/sda10 log 14G linux/win
/dev/sda11 log 14G linux/win
/dev/sda12 log 12G linux/win
/dev/sda13 log 12G linux/win
/dev/sda14 log 10G linux/win
/dev/sda15 log 10G linux/win

most kernels have a 15 partition limit

or something (sizes can vary of course)

If you got a second HD, you could re-partition like above, then dd your main desktop HD onto all new drive/partitions, clean things up a bit. (a bit advanced though, but nice to re-org)

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Just in case you're looking for it, here's a description of FreeBSD disk organization:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/...anization.html

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