New User to FreeBSD

[alwin doss]

Hi,

Let me be honest at the outset, I have never used an operating system other
than linux with enthusiasm.
But something about Linux always troubled me "It's licensing", "such
complex family of distributions which are so different from each other".

Which is when I came across FreeBSD. I fell in love with it, but yes I have
never used it yet, I have tried many times to install it, but the
installation process is really hard, I must say.
I really want to install it on my laptop and all my systems.
Added to the above interests of mine, I am a C++ and java developer. I want
to use this talent that God's has blessed me with in this community.

I want to begin with FreeBSD's very own GUI. Not depending on anyone
(Gnome, KDE or....) I want it to be soooooo good that a commoner shoule be
able to work with it with ease and feel safe and secure.

So if someone could guide me about how to get started with contributing to
FreeBSD it would be great. Please do reach out to me for more details if
you need that is!!!
Send me links that will get me started with FreeBSD I am all excited for
this new journey to begin.


--
Alwin Doss
God's Beloved
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[Waitman Gobble]

Take a look at PC-BSD
http://www.pcbsd.org/

Waitman Gobble
San Jose California USA

[Matthew Seaman]

On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 12:47:26PM +0530, alwin doss wrote:

> Which is when I came across FreeBSD. I fell in love with it, but yes I have
> never used it yet, I have tried many times to install it, but the
> installation process is really hard, I must say.
> I really want to install it on my laptop and all my systems.

Have you tried PC-BSD? It is effectively a 'distro' of FreeBSD, but
aimed very much at desktop users. The installation process has been
extensively modified, and should be much more accessible to new users.

Also, laptops can be difficult to install FreeBSD on -- they tend to
have non-standard versions of many of the typical components. Try
looking up your hardware here: http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/
to see what tricks and tweaks may be needed.

If you'ld like to contribute towards FreeBSD, you will be more that
welcome. The easiest and simplest way to start is to become an active
participant on the various mailing lists or the FreeBSD forums. Then,
as you become familiar with the system, find and characterise any bugs
you run into, and submit well-formed problem reports, for any of the
ports, docs or the base system. "Well-formed" in the sense that just
saying "foo is broken" doesn't really help: it is much better to show
output from foo illustrating the brokenness and explain what you'ld
expect to see specifically. Even better is if you can include patches
to fix the problem. Don't be disenheartened if your patches get quite
rigourously critiqued -- that's a good sign: it usually means that
committers are taking your ideas seriously but want you to improve the
implementation before it can be committed.

Cheers,

Matthew

--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard
Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
JID: mat...@infracaninophile.co.uk Kent, CT11 9PW

[Jamie Paul Griffin]

[ Waitman Gobble wrote on Sun 7.Oct'12 at 0:38:30 -0700 ]

> On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 12:17 AM, alwin doss <alwin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Let me be honest at the outset, I have never used an operating system other
> > than linux with enthusiasm.
> > But something about Linux always troubled me "It's licensing", "such
> > complex family of distributions which are so different from each other".
> >
> > Which is when I came across FreeBSD. I fell in love with it, but yes I have
> > never used it yet, I have tried many times to install it, but the
> > installation process is really hard, I must say.
> > I really want to install it on my laptop and all my systems.
> > Added to the above interests of mine, I am a C++ and java developer. I want
> > to use this talent that God's has blessed me with in this community.
> >
> > I want to begin with FreeBSD's very own GUI. Not depending on anyone
> > (Gnome, KDE or....) I want it to be soooooo good that a commoner shoule be
> > able to work with it with ease and feel safe and secure.
> >
> > So if someone could guide me about how to get started with contributing to
> > FreeBSD it would be great. Please do reach out to me for more details if
> > you need that is!!!
> > Send me links that will get me started with FreeBSD I am all excited for
> > this new journey to begin.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Alwin Doss
> > God's Beloved

> Take a look at PC-BSD
> http://www.pcbsd.org/

> Waitman Gobble

Yes i think you might benefit initially from installing PC-BSD. It IS FreeBSD, but the creators have put a great deal of effort and hard work into making it easier to install and to provide an X environment that is already set up and configured for you to use. If you were to install FreeBSD there are a lot of configuration changes to be made and software to install to get the set-up I believe you're looking for. PC-BSD will take away that part of it for you and most likely make your experience of FreeBSD a lot less headache free. It's default desktop is KDE 4 i believe.

[Thomas Mueller]

> Let me be honest at the outset, I have never used an operating system other
> than linux with enthusiasm.
> But something about Linux always troubled me "It's licensing", "such
> complex family of distributions which are so different from each other".

> Which is when I came across FreeBSD. I fell in love with it, but yes I have
> never used it yet, I have tried many times to install it, but the
> installation process is really hard, I must say.
> I really want to install it on my laptop and all my systems.
> Added to the above interests of mine, I am a C++ and java developer. I want
> to use this talent that God's has blessed me with in this community.

> I want to begin with FreeBSD's very own GUI. Not depending on anyone
> (Gnome, KDE or....) I want it to be soooooo good that a commoner shoule be
> able to work with it with ease and feel safe and secure.

> So if someone could guide me about how to get started with contributing to
> FreeBSD it would be great. Please do reach out to me for more details if
> you need that is!!!
> Send me links that will get me started with FreeBSD I am all excited for
> this new journey to begin.

> Alwin Doss
> God's Beloved

I don't think there is any such thing as "FreeBSD's very own GUI".

FreeBSD's GUI is X Window System, but this is Unix's main GUI, which is also
used by other (quasi-)Unixes including Linux.

You can look through the FreeBSD Handbook online, even download it.

You can find useful links from www.freebsd.org .

Does anybody know about live USBs/CDs/DVDs for FreeBSD?

Tom

[Polytropon]

On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 12:47:26 +0530, alwin doss wrote:
> But something about Linux always troubled me "It's licensing", "such
> complex family of distributions which are so different from each other".

A valid point. With UNIX basic knowledge, you can master nearly
any "outdated" commercial UNIX, BSD and Linux, even though it
is sometimes complicated to find the "simple parts" (i. e. the
UNIX parts) in Linux. :-)

> Which is when I came across FreeBSD. I fell in love with it, but yes I have
> never used it yet, I have tried many times to install it, but the
> installation process is really hard, I must say.

I cannot conform that. Do you have a second system that you can
use to refer to the documentation that exactly describes, with
text and pictures, how to perform the installation process?

Note that FreeBSD, in opposite to many other systems, comes with
excellent documentation both for Internet and offline use. Check
out The FreeBSD Handbook's installation section:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall.html

and the FAQ regarding this topic:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/faq/install.html

You'll see that the installation is quite simple: You just have
to follow the instructions shown on the screen.

> I really want to install it on my laptop and all my systems.

It's a bit complicated to get _all_ features running on _all_ kinds
of laptops has hardware manufacturers do not care much about standards
and specifications. Still I hear from many people successfully running
FreeBSD on their super-duper-new laptops, and I run it on my old and
shady laptops. :-)

> Added to the above interests of mine, I am a C++ and java developer. I want
> to use this talent that God's has blessed me with in this community.

Both languages can be used on FreeBSD. C++ is supported out of the
box. Java requires you to install additional software due to licensing
terms and lawyer blahblah.

> I want to begin with FreeBSD's very own GUI.

FreeBSD does not have a "very own GUI". In fact, it has many GUIs,
and it doesn't have a GUI per se. Note that it is a multi-purpose
system, that's why it doesn't come with a graphical installer so
you can install it on a server (that doesn't even have a monitor).
After installation, you can add as many GUIs as you like (for example,
you can have both KDE and Gnome on your system, plus olvwm and
even WindowMaker). The choice is _yours_. There is nothing directly
tied to the system.

However, PC-BSD comes with a preinstalled and preconfigured (!) KDE
environment. VirtualBSD comes with Xfce, if I remember correctly.
You can check out those projects: PC-BSD is said to be easier to
adopt by Linux and even "Windows" users as it comes with a graphical
installer, preconfigured environments, preinstalled software, and
caters the "out of the box" community a lot. And VirtualBSD can be
used from within a VM, it's a nice "try it out" system.

http://www.pcbsd.org/

http://www.virtualbsd.info/

You can find screenshots there too. :-)

> Not depending on anyone
> (Gnome, KDE or....) I want it to be soooooo good that a commoner shoule be
> able to work with it with ease and feel safe and secure.

That's one of the primary advantages of FreeBSD: The system will not
do anything until _YOU_ tell it to. Know what you do. Know where to
find information (Handbook, FAQ, "man" command, mailing lists).

> So if someone could guide me about how to get started with contributing to
> FreeBSD it would be great.

Find something that you consider interesting and worth contributing
to. Refer to this page for more information:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/contributing/index.html

> Send me links that will get me started with FreeBSD I am all excited for
> this new journey to begin.

If you enounter problems during installation, feel free to contact
the list. Describe your problem as exact as possible, use the
available troubleshooting resources first, like, "do your
homework". :-)

http://www.freebsd.org/community/mailinglists.html

http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo

http://www.freebsd.org/support.html



--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...