[GLLUG] new guy to Linux, need a few reccomendations

[STeve Andre']

On Wednesday 20 January 2010 19:45:02 Clay Dowling wrote:
> Bert W. Carrier Jr. wrote:
> > Thanks for the advice, guys.   I'll try to install Fluxbox, and see how
> > that works.   I know nothing about BSD, so now is probably a good time
> > to start learning.  what are some good resources for BSD?
>
> First, Fluxbox is awesome.  Light weight but still looks nice and acts
> like a modern window manager.  We run a kiosk machine at Penguicon using
> similar hardware, using fluxbox, and it works pretty darned well.
>
> Second, OpenBSD is pretty powerful, and most everything you need can be
> found at http://www.openbsd.org.  It's also not a good starter UNIX.  It
> was written assuming that you knew what you were doing.  It's incredibly
> well documented and will run on almost any hardware. If you understand
> how UNIX works and are cool with the command line it's a great OS.
> There are no GUI admin tools though, and if you can't run your system
> from the command line you'll hate it.
>
> Clay

I've had good experiences with three friends now, using OpenBSD as 
their first free OS.  All it takes is the willingness to *read*.  The 
installer really couldn't  be more simple.  One of the friends had heard
that it wasn't friendly and avoided trying it, as he thought that a non-
gui system would  be 'hard'.  His first install took 9 minutes.  I timed
it.  That blew away his hesitations...

You are right about the documentation.  But with books and web sites
out there, is googling for things about OpenBSD very much different
than something that's blocking you on a Linux distro?  I don't think
so, and as soon as you've gotten some  traction with it the documentation
just shines.  And, if you find something that could use help or is really
obscure, the doc changes, sometimes just a few words or sentences 
at a time.

Add to that the fact that OpenBSD is a monolithic kernel such that is
has every device driver that it knows about always there (except for
the install floppies) a newbie doesn't have to instantly learn about
foibles with device drivers, to get some wireless card to work.  Seems
like a win to me.

--STeve Andre'