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FreeBSD As A Workstation For UNIX Newbies
JT writes: "OSNews features an article introducing the FreeBSD operating system to newbies and Windows users. The article describes the installation, its GUI, application base and it has some more information about Unix and *BSD in general." Since Linux (at least the varieties with cute installation routines) is often presented as the *nix beginner's best choice, it's good to see articles like this one pointing out a broader range of choices.
The level-headed people are the ones who have traditionally been the "FreeBSD community." Over the last couple of years, a large amount of very vocal people, known as "zealots," have moved to FreeBSD from OSes such as Linux, and then they go around preaching FreeBSD in the same loud way they promoted Linux. Please consider where such users came from before judging everyone that uses FreeBSD. Thank you.
I install and run OpenBSD and FreeBSD (as well as Redhat Linux and Windows NT/2000) on servers all the time. But I'm like a one-legged man on a pogo stick when it comes to installing either as a workstation. OpenBSD apparently even makes me manually add the X package after the install. FreeBSD is a bit better, but the configuration is all very manual. To contrast, Redhat Linux correctly detects my mouse, video card and monitor and makes it somewhat hard to continue the install unless the settings actually work.
Out of my team of 10 developers, I doubt more than 3 other guys would be able to get FreeBSD running as an X workstation without someone to help them. And all of them, even me, would lose interest before getting it working. I can feel my interest waning right now. I'd rather play with OpenBSD's new pf than pretend it's 1996 and manually configure XFree86.