A Taste of FreeBSD With VirtualBSD

ReeceTarbert writes "If you wanted to try FreeBSD but didn't have the right hardware, or enough time to make it useful on the desktop, VirtualBSD might fit the bill: it's a VMware appliance based on FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE and features the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment and a few of the most common applications to make it very functional right out of the box. If you're curious you can have a look at the screenshots, or proceed to the download page and grab the torrent file right away. (Note: VirtualBSD also works in VirtualBox 2.x as long as you create a new virtual machine and select the virtual disk from the archive instead of creating a new one)."

Comments

Not quite...

[TheRaven64]

Note: VirtualBSD also works in VirtualBox 2.x

FreeBSD works in VirtualBox 2.1.2 and later. Earlier versions had a bug which prevented FreeBSD from working correctly.

Surely you jest

[damn_registrars]

don't have the right hardware

It is almost more difficult to find wrong hardware for FreeBSD. Granted, it doesn't support quite as many systems as NetBSD, but unless you are running something quite odd it is likely you can run FreeBSD on it. Hell, most systems that are being thrown away right now can run it just fine.

FreeBSD 7.1 was released for:

• 64bit AMD
• 32bit x86
• 64bit Intel (Itanium)
• PC98
• PowerPC
• 64bit SPARC

And if you happen to be running an Alpha, you can still run FreeBSD 6.3