I have to say that I liked eveything about PC-BSD,except for the fact that I couldnt get basic plugins for web use(flash,etc),so I couldnt use it.If there is a way to get these plugins,I would be back in a flash Very stable,and very easy to use,I love how much it resembles windows in the program handling department.Getting new programs was the easiest I've seen so far.Hope they catch up with linux in the compatability department,love to use it again.

You know what .. back that up, I dare you. I know this is mostly a Linux oriented forum.. so I understand you're a bit "Linux uber alles" .. but go ahead and try to give arguments why both Windows and Linux are better than FreeBSD.

oh no, please do not start this os war again

OP wrote: Try it for yourself and see. It's freely available.

Windows isn't unstable and insecure if you know what you are doing and stay away from pirated software. I'm not saying I like Windows much at all as an operating system, I'm just stating the obvious.

That's unfortunately not the case. Windows and its bundled software are unstable and unsecure by design ...

By the way, who are you responding to in this six month old thread ?

Hard to understand what you are saying but...

You are right, hardware support for FreeBSD is not as good as Linux right now. Although most hardware a year or older will most likely work perfect. It is only the most cutting edge stuff. I use only AMD board and have found NForce4 chipsets on socket 939 and 940 boards very well supported. Some new AM2 board with Nvidia 570 and 590 chips are supported poorly. If you are looking to run RAID I always recommend 3WARE raid cards. They are very well supported and documented for BSD. And they are lighting fast!

As far as being as 'easy as Windows', not by a long shot. FreeBSD requires more time and thought to install than most Linux flavors. If you are used to running Linux you might pick it up quick.

Good luck.

(emphasis added)
Dude, this is one of my favorite quotes of all time now.
I remember the 'age of times' . . . it was good.
And, yes. Many times Linux has 'made me fool.'

I've had some experience now with using and installing different Linux distributions, Gentoo, U/Ku/Xu-buntu, Slackware, OpenSUSE, Fedora, etc. ... I was thinking about trying a *BSD some time in the future. Is PC-BSD pretty much like FreeBSD only more user friendly? Also, how would one go about setting up FreeBSD with only one CD? Can you use an http/ftp install? What is the livefs.iso?

Isn't PC-BSD still only one CD?
Yes, you can do a network installation with FreeBSD. It only requires one CD for a basic installation. I'd say most people still just install the basic stuff from the CD and add X and everything else afterwards. (I don't even add the ports, I just do it after installation, as it's easy to do and this way is a more updated version of the ports tree.)

If you've dealt with Gentoo and Slack, FreeBSD shouldn't be too difficult for you. My own personal opinion is that the documentation tends to be far better than Linux.
Man pages tend to be more likely to have examples. I have a theory on this, based on the old saying that the two things that came out of Berkeley were BSD and LSD--I picture one fellow showing another a man page that he wrote, and the first laughs hysterically, crumbs from whatever he's eating falling into his beard and saying, "Wow man, what the **** are you talking about?" inspiring the other person to write a more readable man page.

There's all sorts of articles comparing them, the inestimable Dru Lavigne has an excellent article for newcomers about FreeBSD for Linux users somewhere (on onlamp.com).

Depending upon whether you preferred Gentoo to SuSE, Fedora and the *buntus, you should like it. Daniel Robbins, creator of Gentoo, worked with FreeBSD, and portage is actually originally based on ports.

Not to break in gang
but I've never tried any bsd, etc

does bsd use grub, etc like linux?
is there a bsd that boots off usb's?
can bsd be installed beside linux
and let me direct the install??

which bsd is best and like a frugal linux
smallish but definitly gotta have X

You can install LILO or GRUB from what I've read.
Not long ago I was burning CDs. I was getting different Linux distributions, and things. I looked at the FreeBSD site. I saw the (6?) CD set for installation, or however many I can't think of how many now. I saw the livefs.iso sitting there. I burned it. That would be enough for an http/ftp installation, wouldn't it? But what is the livefs.iso for? I read it can be used to install, but non-standard installation, etc. I don't understand if it is useable for the regular installation.

The BSDs have their own bootloader, neither grub nor lilo. It's actually a bit more primitive, and many people who multiboot either do it with grub (in which case, you can use the typical chainloader +1, or else GAG.

I haven't used the livefs, so I don't know that one. I usually just take the first CD, which is enough for installation.

@linux72, which is best. That's another flame war. All three of the main ones are quite small compared to a typical Desktop Linux, probably smaller than Arch, though I'm not sure. FreeBSD is probably the best one to start with. Get familiar with it, and the others are not all that different--for example, I would say there's less of an adjustment between FreeBSD and another BSD than you'd have between say, ArchLinux and Fedora.

I think I'd recommend FreeBSD to someone trying it for the first time. However, I'm sure you can get many to argue that. As far as Japanese support, which is necessary for me, FreeBSD is the best. (NetBSD isn't difficult, OpenBSD's Japanese support is rather poor, or at least it was a year and a half ago.)

I was thinking maybe I was wrong about that, I read on their site and see why I thought so. The section of install GRUB/LILO etc. ... I looked at it without reading much and thought it was showing how to use LILO and optionally install GRUB. I thought it had its own, but was a little confused.
I do remember reading it used a different one a while back, and forgot about it.

I gave the new PCBSD release a try a few days ago after first loading it into Vbox in my Debian install. It was impressive so I installed it on a spare 20G drive. Again.... impressive..... and I'm thinking about giving it a serious try.
> Beautiful installer. No glitches. No mention of GRUB or LILO but not surprising since it had the whole disk to work with.
> KDE4 implementation is clean and bug-free (for me)
> For us Linux guys it will take some getting used to the subtle changes in the file system layout and how "basic stuff works."
> The package management system is particularly interesting and on the few things I tried seemed to work well until the site went down.

Anybody know what happened to them? They've been MIA since Thursday evening.

BTW: They offer all the usual install methods: net, DVDISO, or CDISO. There are 3 CD's in the set but the third is not needed. I thought it could be installed with just one but you gotta' have the first two.