From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Oct 31 22:26:29 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from berzerk.gpcc.itd.umich.edu (berzerk.gpcc.itd.umich.edu [141.211.2.162]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 640A937B4D7 for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 22:26:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from gorf.gpcc.itd.umich.edu (smtp@gorf.gpcc.itd.umich.edu [141.211.2.147]) by berzerk.gpcc.itd.umich.edu (8.8.8/4.3-mailhub) with ESMTP id BAA10170; Wed, 1 Nov 2000 01:26:24 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost (timcm@localhost) by gorf.gpcc.itd.umich.edu (8.8.8/5.1-client) with ESMTP id BAA00579; Wed, 1 Nov 2000 01:26:24 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 01:26:24 -0500 (EST) From: Tim McMillen X-Sender: timcm@gorf.gpcc.itd.umich.edu To: Anthony J Knapp Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: beginners with bsd In-Reply-To: <000a01c043c3$942af1e0$1d24fc3e@knapp> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Wow, as a true newcomer to computers I'd say FreeBSD would be quite a stretch (How'd you find us? :) But it could be done if you were willing to be patient enough. In exchange for a tough learning curve at the start you would be rewarded with a very powerful, stable system. I might get flak for saying this but I think you should get a macintosh with MacOS X on it. It will be very easy to use but will have a FreeBSD like core under the hood. comments below also On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, Anthony J Knapp wrote: > Help, please! > As a newcomer to any kind of computing, and as one who'd like to get > away from Windows, what is the easiest way to start with Freebsd? Well, install it first. Maybe get a computer savvy friend to install it for you. Or buy a system that has it already on it. Once it is installed if you use one of the desktops like KDE or GNOME you should be ok > I've tried to trace a plain English book on the subject without success. There are two: "The Complete FreeBSD" by Lehey and the "FreeBSD Handbook" > > Is Freebsd suitable for beginners? Could I run the normal > wordprocessing, database, and spreadsheet applications with it? You wouldn't be able to run the applications that everybody else (Windows) uses, but there are such applications for FreeBSD. > Thanks, > > > Tony Knapp (membership no 20001001) I commend your courage. If you really poured through those books and the website (www.freebsd.org) you might just be able to do it. Good luck. It would be a worthy adventure. Tim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message