frob23

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I love this product. I have been using FreeBSD on my main machine for years now. It is very stable and everything is integrated. When I upgrade one part of the operating system I don't need to worry about breaking another part. Upgrading the operating system is a snap. Just a few commands and it does everything. Same thing when installing ports (new programs). Once you install this system you may forget that you aren't running Linux. The Linux emulation layer (not real emulation since it just translates system calls into BSD format) works flawlessly in my experience.

The only downsides come right at the start for new users. The install screen is text (which I prefer but I know some people don't). The system doesn't automatically select tons of packages to install so the user has to sort throught the huge list of available packages and find the ones they want. They are sorted by type but this can take a while. After that there are minor things that need to be done -- like turn on xdm so it will start when you boot. These things only hit you once and each of them can be figured out very easily. The online documentation will walk the user through each of these step.

The reason the install proceedure is no big deal is that almost all of your updates from that point on will be done without using it. The only time it is recommended to start fresh is when moving from large numbers like 4.x->5.x. I love this operating system and would recommend it to anyone. If my mom can use it so can you.

fasmaie

I have been a Slackware Linux user for a long time (relatively), and I was happy with it, in the main. However, having a spare hard drive and having read some interesting things about FreeBSD, I gave it a shot. I am running it on an IBM TP 600X, and, being used to text-mode installs, I had no trouble installing it. I did have to figure out how to best get it to recognise my PCMCIA card, but that was trivial.
I like the fact that it installs a barebones system initially. I prefer to add software I want, rather than remove stuff I don't want. I also immediately recompile the kernel after installation, so I was not bothered by the fact that it did not immediately recognise things like my sound card. Recompilation with the things I wanted initialized was quick (no coffee break here). Since then, I have had no problems, except when building a few programs, but, again it was easy to solve.
To conclude: Installation is (relatively) easy. Configuration can be a slight problem, but easily handled with the online help. Runs like a charm (how does a charm run? Oh well!!).
It is now my main OS.