New FreeBSD Book Aimed At Newest Users 158
Chris Coleman writes: "Annelise Anderson has written a new FreeBSD book titled "FreeBSD: An Open Source Operating System for Your Personal Computer".
The book includes:
* installation CD-ROM for the entire system plus many software applications
* space requirements, screen shots, and detailed instructions for installing FreeBSD
* step-by-step instructions on configuring and running FreeBSD, connecting to the Internet, setting up an internal network, and setting up sound, X Window System (the graphical user interface), and printing." I think the raftload of available books have helped tremendously in making GNU/Linux popular, by first making it possible for non-experts to install it -- with more BSD books, perhaps the same will happen. Fame awaits you if you care to give this book a Slashdot review :)
BSD Firewall project for windoze users (Score:3, Interesting)
Our local UUG (CUUG) [cuug.ab.ca] ran a course where they put you step-by-step though the process of making a firewall in one evening. You just had to take the thing home and plug it into your cablemodem/hub or PC. They even made sure you had the right IP's for your local provider, being DSL or cable
Books are good, yes, but the UNIX/Linux community reaching out with projects kept simple to show the user something they can't do with Windoze is another way to clue the masses to the strenghs of other OS's.
FreeBSD, Linux, custom bootdisks the difference (Score:3, Interesting)
I am relatively young to the scene myself, but let's take a walk down memory lane say six years ago. Back in those days the Linux Howto's, especially the Installation Howto, were essentially Slackware Howto's. (The book I used to figure out how to install Linux was essentially the Howto's printed out.) My PC's BIOS from that era did not support booting from an ATAPI CD Rom drive. Hard drives were much smaller but the EIDE ones were coming up against a succession of limits, limits in where a kernel could be located and still be seen by a bootloader. For Linux there was a well-defined path introducing newbies: you installed and created a custom bootdisk. Linux installation instructions also told how to edit the kernel for the bootdisk floppy to change the root partition location.
From my newbie perspective, this was installation Nirvana! I didn't have to worry about LILO if I didn't want to. From the perspective of other people sharing the PC I used, other than taking up hard drive space, they didn't have to know Linux existed. And Linux could be installed in an extended partition not just a primary partition. Keep in mind that hard drives were a lot smaller then, so for dual-boot setups it was nice to be able to dedicate some more room for the Windows C: drive. And not only that but since everyone did the custom bootdisk compiling as a rite of passage, people could compile bootdisks to help others if the default floppy didn't have the right drivers.
Now from what I have read of the FreeBSD community's thoughts, they couldn't care less about such concerns. The ISP I used back then was hosted on a collection of FreeBSD boxes, abandoning a more monolothic solution with an SGI server, because the ISP's lead technical person knew how to do it. FreeBSD is more like an industrial consortium as far as the core developers go, and at least at that time there was a huge emphasis on stuff related to running ISPs. From their perspective it was laughable to devote much effort to support the most unreliable medium of all, a floppy, for custom booting a machine. And someone like an ISP wouldn't be using EIDE, they'd be using SCSI. 528MB limit [linuxdoc.org], "get some real hardware, kid" I'd imagine they'd think. And they'd have their internal network and their own procedures for mass replicating setups to many machines.
Six years later I think we can see everyone got what they wanted. The Linux community developed critical mass and got wildly popular with newbies. The FreeBSD community was left alone by the newbies they didn't want to deal with.
Why I, a *nix noob, choose BSD (Score:4, Interesting)
Just when I'm down and out and nearly giving up with *nix, I find FreeBSD. I install it in half the time on my old computer that the other Linux distros took. I was running Lynx and felt like a ninja soon after. Within a day I got X running. Then I went to a bookstore to pick up a book. There's a whole shelf for Linux books. And one lonely FreeBSD book. A day later I've recompiled my kernel as well. The book is a bit too advanced for my tastes, so I should probably pick up this book and maybe a 'Basic *nix Primer' or something. But for me FreeBSD has been infinitely more valuable as a learning tool than Linux was. But really, that's just my experience. No doubt I'm in the minority, and people with more typical hardware will do better with Linux.
keeps getting easier (Score:2, Interesting)
As an amateur tinkerer with various unix flavors, I found rh5 a bit awkward to do anything with, 6.2 was considerably better. From there I went to buying the 4.1 BSD at the house of evil (aka Fry's), and found it to be the easiest *nix distribution yet.
Between the book (the whole reason for buying the package in the first place) and the install system, I found it very easy to get up and running. The management system for getting patches and updates was wonderful...
Then I got a copy of RH7.1 That has to be the slickest install package yet. Flawless install, everything works, and less interaction than even the most basic windoze install (ducking violently hurled heavy objects).
If rh keeps going this way, it could well be ready for general use in the near future.
As for the book in question, it sounds worth a read, although I won't be doing a write up on it - as you can already see, my writing sucks...
Now This Is A Book I Would Buy (Score:4, Interesting)
- I am primarily a Windows user (and Windows support tech,) but want to get more involved with the alternative OSs, especially because of Windows XP. (I already installed Mandrake 8.0, but I don't want to be permanently GUI handicapped)
- I don't have an enormous pipe to download applications. I can only get 28.8 where I live
- When people say 'RTFM' I actually have something to refer to
- It's too time consuming to look up all kinds of documentation online. I know it exists, but downloading it, finding what I want, printing it, etc is annoying. I don't have another box to use while setting up BSD.
- It essentially centralises everything, and I can even learn things without my box at hand because I can just sit down with the book
It's this kind of thing that might lasso in users who otherwise have too little time/patience to break out of the windows mold.
Re:Great (Score:2, Interesting)
I recently taught a short course on FreeBSD at my university.
Why did I pick FreeBSD? Because it is really easy to install, but still doesn't abstract things with wizards.
The audience of the class were people who had never touched UNIX before and only two of my students had ever even installed Windows.
Every single one of my students was able to install FreeBSD at the end of the class. This was even after they were bombarded for two weeks with things like package management, X11, Window Maker, KDE, StarOffice, gimp, etc.
They were able to mainly intuit the install afterward.
FreeBSD is darned easy to install, and even easier to use afterward. If FreeBSD ever added a gui to the install, people would be bitching that MacOS was hard to install.
As a (now) longtime Linux/BSD user, I have to say: FreeBSD is as easy as UNIX installs get. And I'll say its easier than any version of Windows to install other than Win2k.
-Peter