New FreeBSD Book Aimed At Newest Users

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 :)

Comments

Why I, a *nix noob, choose BSD

[Bluetick]

About six weeks ago I wanted to get into this whole Linux revolution. So I downloaded just about every major distro (got about 7 I think). Mixed success. Some crashed during the install. Some didn't recognize my SCSI card, and I didn't know what to do. Some didn't recognize my vid card. Some didn't recognize my USB mouse. The one that I did get installed and get X up was Redhat, and it's support for my vid card was abysmal and had all sorts of horrid side effects.

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.

Hrmm

[NitsujTPU]

I dunno. BSD has been around for a LONG TIME. In many ways, no offense, I am using a linux box to type this, it is a superior OS to linux (not to say that linux doesn't beat it in other areas). It's not any harder to install than most linux distributions (save mandrake, redhat, oh, perhaps it is harder to install), but I think that what makes Linux more popular is a face recognition and the loud mouths of its user (again, nothing wrong with that). BSD has been popular in academic circles for AGES, but you hardly ever hear someone who's never touched unix say "hrmm, maybe I'll try BSD." Whereas you hear plenty of windows users either slamming linux, in an uninformed manner, or saying "gosh, maybe I'll try that, often in an equally uninformed manner." BSD is a great OS, but I don't think that a lack of documentation is the reason linux has "more popularity (if it does)." I just think that it's more advertised.

Now This Is A Book I Would Buy

[Jucius Maximus]

And I would buy it for several reasons:

- 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.