[GLLUG] BSD Distro First-Try Recommendations

[Clay Dowling]

Brian Hoort wrote:

> Being frustrated with some GNU/Linux distros, I'm considering trying a 
> BSD varient.  I'm mainly concerned with stability and ease through 
> updates.  Do the BSD distros provide a APT/up2date style update 
> mechanism, and which variety would be recommended for a first timer 
> with no experience there?

I'll also chime in for FreeBSD here.  It's pretty easy to install and 
bone simple to maintain.  The only part that is really stinky is trying 
to upgrade a major X windows system line Gnome or KDE. Wiping out all X 
and starting fresh is the only practical way, unless you want to 
dedicate a week to playing/fighting with it. I've never met an operating 
system or distribution where upgrading the windowing system was easy, so 
that's not a big flaw for FreeBSD.

That said, I'm running on OpenBSD right now, and couldn't be happier. 
It's very similar to FreeBSD, except that the core developers are 
security freaks. It's not for the faint of heart though. While modern 
installs are pretty easy, with my first install it was a good thing that 
I was pretty familiar with UNIX already, or I would have been up a crick 
without a paddle (those of you who read Pat McManus will recognize that 
I did not misspell that).  Definitely don't try your first OpenBSD 
install from a downloaded version though. Get a Distribution CD from 
http://www.openbsd.org.  The cover doubles as a walk through for an 
install, and you'll want it for your first time.

So get FreeBSD and you'll be happy.  A CD is cool, but I've had very 
good luck installing from the network.  I'd also advise staying with a 
Stable release, which means 4.7 or 4.8.  My experience (and the 
experience of the computer lab) has been that when the FreeBSD team says 
something is stable, they mean it, and if they don't, they mean that too.

Clay