Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 05:26:46 -0700 From: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net> To: "Tim Parkinson" <tim.parkinson@ccr.ntu.ac.uk>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: What do people on the list use FreeBSD for? Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980612052646.007f8100@mx.serv.net> In-Reply-To: <000b01bd95ea$68bf5f20$92194798@stimpy>
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I dunno, I'm just having fun learning right now. I'm thinking of the learning process as "7 circles" of gurudom :-)... I recently entered the first circle by installing and configuring FreeBSD, and getting X-Windows up and running nicely. Now I'm working on the 2nd circle, compiling my first custom kernel. Once I reach the 7th circle, I will leave my body and enter the Universal Net Godhood, those souls who were once Unix gurus and have vanished to higher planes of existence. ;-) But seriously... once I get the system up and running, I plan to try and get it networked via Ethernet with Win95 and TCP/IP (3rd circle). I plan to play games on it, mess around with various X servers, add new stuff, etc. Learning Unix pays off in the business world bigtime, and although I have nothing really serious to use it for on my home machine (it's on a second PC actually that I use as a testbed for OS's and software - my main PC is Win95 only and remains stable (as stable as Win95 gets, anyway)), I will soon be starting a PC upgrade/repair/build business and offering FreeBSD as an optional free OS on new systems (otherwise, the customer will have to buy their own). Therefore, I should know it like the back of my hand (nobody wants to pay $50/hr. install fees to a newbie ;-) I've tried two of the 'Linuces' (Debian and Slackware) and so far I prefer FreeBSD, although it has just about as steep a learning curve as any Unix if you want to really do anything with it. It makes it easier for newbies though in most areas than many of the 'Linuces' (Linux) do. One thing I really hate about it are parts of the sysinstall procedure. Adding anything once the system is installed can be a real serious pain in the tail, and upgrading can mess your entire system up. This area needs a lot of work still (compare it to the Win95 or NT install, for example). At 11:11 AM 6/12/98 +0100, Tim Parkinson wrote: >I'm curious as to what people are using their FreeBSD machines for. I know >some people who are complete UN*X nutcases, yet when asked, why they use it >they can't answer. >I was just thinking about specific applications that people had. > >Personally, I have a FreeBSD system that is being used as a gateway for our >internal Lan at home through a cable modem, the modem doesn't work properly >at the moment :( But thats the point of trials. >We also run that box as an e-mail/mud/web server, which eventually will be >accessible at a decent speed to the Internet as a whole. >The LAN it is serving is composed of Win95 clients with one NetBSD/SPARC >machine and a Linux box. It will also soon have a cluster of 386's running >Linux and the Beowulf distributed processing system. > >I have found that setting up the FreeBSD machine has been an absolute >doddle. FreeBSD is a very logical OS and although I have a few years UN*X >experience (as a user of SunOS and a little Linux, not admin), I thought it >would be a little harder to set up. NATD (Network Address Translation >Daemon) took about 5 minutes to set up, with a little extra time to >recompile a custom kernel. The man page on NATD is superb, with lots of >examples on how to configure it. > >Cheers, > >---------------------------------------------- >Tim Parkinson -Teaching Company Associate >Nottingham Trent University & Clerical Gas Ltd >Tel: 0115 9783677 Fax: 0115 9706977 >tim.parkinson@ccr.ntu.ac.uk >tim@gubbins.ml.org -Home To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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