Now that the challenge of FreeBSD is not as daunting as it was a month ago when I switched from Debian... what kind of hurdles should I expect to be facing as I nuke my system tonight and go for an OpenBSD 3.4 install? What can I say? I'm a sucker for punishment.


I want: multimedia support, CD burning and to be able to use GIMP. That's about it, apart from messing about with the GNOME environment - I like deliberately breaking things and fixing them.

Yes you can do all that, but when you say "multimedia support" does that include accelerated 3D graphics? OpenBSD doesn't have 3D. Other than that, the answer is: Yes.

The actual install is very quick. The only tricky part is learning how to use the disklabel tool for OpenBSD, everything else is cake. The documentation is outstanding, unlike many OSs. Just go to The OpenBSD Installation Guide and in particular OpenBSD/i386 3.4 Installation Instructions and Disk Setup Manual Make sure you read the Disk Setup Manual especially carefully. The first time I installed OBSD I didn't understand it and I ended having to blow away the install and start over. Now it's a piece of cake. I rebuild my kernel and userland almost every weekend and install (well, upgrade) it on 3 boxes.

You will find it somewhat similar to FreeBSD as it is a _BSD_. If you want to be cool just triple boot your system with FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Then you can decide for yourself which is the best for your personal needs.

Yeah, I noticed disklabel was kind of a pain to get my head around, but I got through that in the end. Only thing is, any version other than 3.3 hangs during the kernel boot sequence. Once I installed 3.3 and rebooted, the system hung at the same point (I can't remember what module it was attempting to load in, I think it was to do with scsibus - I'm not at that computer right now) so I backed out and reinstalled FreeBSD.


And by multimedia, I didn't mean 3D, just the ability to play back and encode audio and video.

Why would you install OpenBSD 3.3? OBSD 3.4 is release now and has been for a couple of months. When you say "hangs" do you mean it pauses for a long time, or it completely ceases to respond? If the latter rather than the former, how did you get it installed then?

Rehab junkie I don't know if your problem was the same as mine, but I just got through
setting up a dual boot mdk9.1/OpenBsd on my toshiba laptop. The cd's kept hanging
so I d/l floppyC34.fs, booted with the floppy, and installed from the cd. I am a linux
newbie and am completly lost with OBSD 3.4 but I think it is going to be fun.

Because when I booted the 3.3 CD I could get the system installed. By "hangs" I mean just that - system froze and completely ceased to respond.

Long story short: it's not installed, I backed out and reinstalled FreeBSD 5.2.

Try 3.4 instead, whatever device wasn't working may have updated drivers now.

I tried 3.4 - but didn't even get as far as the install console, I had the system hang at the exact same point. I might try booting from floppy, then installing from the CD as mjolnir did.

Hi,

I am also prepared switching from Debian to xBSD the latter of which is completely new to me. I have been running several Linux distro, such Mandrake, RH, Gentoo, Knoppix, Debian,etc. I have following questions and expect to be advised.

1) Does FreeBSD supports 3D? I need 3D.
2) There are several xBSD, such as OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc. which of them are suitable for
a. Workstation
b. Server
3) Can documents created on Linux be read and edited on xBSD
4) Can Linux applications be run on xBSD

TIA

B.R.
satimis

Yes, but I have not set it up so I don't know the details. By the way, why do you "need" 3D? X looks just fine on OpenBSD (and in fact, Linux w/o 3D). I'm not sure why it would be absolutely necessary to have 3D for a workstation.

Any, although FreeBSD tends to support bleeding edge hardware more quickly than the other two BSDs you mentioned (unless you actually use bleeding edge hardware, that's not likely to be an issue).

Again, any of them. It depends what your priorities are. FreeBSD tends to have all-around higher performance, although I've heard from several sources that NetBSD has the fastest TCP stack, and OpenBSD is well known for being highly secure. It depends what you want to use it for specifically.

Of course.

Generally yes, using Linux binary compatibility; however this is usually not necessary, since many of the popular Linux tools are available for all the BSDs as well. Just install the BSD native version of whatever software you want to run.

Hi chort,

Thanks for your advice.

Quote:

Yes, but I have not set it up so I don't know the details. By the way, why do you "need" 3D? X looks just fine on OpenBSD (and in fact, Linux w/o 3D). I'm not sure why it would be absolutely necessary to have 3D for a workstation.

Only in case 3D drawing application is needed. This is rare.

Quote:

Any, although FreeBSD tends to support bleeding edge hardware more quickly than the other two BSDs you mentioned (unless you actually use bleeding edge hardware, that's not likely to be an issue).

According to my past experience, most hardware available on market without driver supplied for Linux. I have to find driver from Linux World. How about in BSD World?


Only in case BSD version not available

Thanks

B.R.
satimis

I haven't try any BSD yet but i heard it's reliable than linux... is this true?

Ryan,

Generally, yes. The code is a lot more mature than Linux and the release process is more controlled. Linux, as I see it, is barely controlled chaos. The BSDs run themselves much more as commercially oriented OSs. Just look at all the major network appliance vendors that either run BSD-based systems, or BSD-inspired (i.e. took BSD design): Cisco, Nokia, Juniper, CipherTrust, IronPort, nCipher, hell.. Apple uses it for their desktop.

Sway... Thank for the info Chort... I'll be shifting to BSD starting... today