some advice needed to considering to move my w2k machine into a freebsd workstation.

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2004-10-26 16:31, Jian Guang Xu <jianguang.xu at gmail.com> wrote:
> My current system follows:
> AMD Athlon 1600+, 1 Gigabytes RAM, 40 Giga harddrive, GeForce 2 with
> 32 Mb, AC97 Onboard Audio Adaptor, D-Link DFE-538TX.

The hardware is more than ok for running recent versions of FreeBSD.
You shouldn't have problems, as far as the hardware is concerned.

The comments below refer to each of the software packages, applications or
services you currently use.  It's probably a long reply -- too long for all of
it to be correct -- but, since it's always good news to find out that people
want to try using FreeBSD, let's hope I get most of it right ;-)

> The system got follow applications:
> . W2K Workstation Professional runs very smooth right now.
> . Firefox 1.0 for most of the web surfing.

I recently switched to Firefox 1.x from Mozilla 1.7.x and all the sites I have
to visit work like a charm.  There is one minor point that I miss from the
Mozilla menu (being able to zoom at specific percentage, i.e. 105%), but in
general the change seemed ok.

> . IE occasionally but necessary for some of the web-sites I need to go to due to
>   personally reason.

This could be a problem.  Don't these sites work with Firefox at all?  If not,
and you do decide to work with FreeBSD, you can always fire up VMWare and boot
into a Windows installation, but I am not sure how well that would work, as I
don't use VMWare.

> . Thunderbird for me email and newsgroup reading.

This should work on FreeBSD too.

> . VMWare to testing FreeBSD.

Not sure.  I haven't used VMWare on FreeBSD.  Perhaps another member of the
list who has can reply here.

> . ACT! 2005 as a CRM software (personal organizer as well) but I'm trying
>   to move to a  internet application via www.freecrm.com

I'm not sure about `ACT! 2005', you'd have to ask the company that releases it
regarding availability of FreeBSD versions, but freecrm seems promising and
all it needs is a browser.  That's cool.

> . OpenOffice currently runs in my system with MS Office removed.

This runs on FreeBSD too.  If you are not using MS Office at all, the
transition should have no ill effects on the way you work with Office
formats.

> . Acrobat 5.0 for form editing(Occasionally)

Form editing is something I haven't used, so I don't know if it's supported by
some PDF reader in FreeBSD.

Previewing of PDF files works beautifully though.  There is print/gv,
graphics/xpdf and an integrated PS/PDF viewer in both Gnome and KDE.

If you ever test the print/gv or graphics/xpdf packages, please let me know.
I'll tell you how to configure your browser (Firefox or Mozilla) to use one of
these for opening PS and/or PDF files and a few tricks that will make your
previewing easier.

> . MusicMatch for online radio (all the time)
> . Realplayer for DVD/Movie(Occasionally)

I usually listen to online broadcasts with audio/mpg123 or audio/x11amp (a
winamp clone for X11).  I'm not sure if these two can work with the online
radio stations you like listening too though.  Perhaps if you mentioned the
names of the stations or the format of their broadcast someone else can help
with this one, telling us if FreeBSD has all the proper utilities/packages.

For movies I use multimedia/mplayer.  It cna play almost anything I can swing
at its face.  It lacks the bells and whistles media player has on Windows, but
it works fine and that's what I mostly care about.

> . I have online conference calls using MS Media Player Plugin which is very
>   important for me.

This is probably the most important reason why you should do a very careful
research, to decide *if* you want to switch to FreeBSD and then *how* it's
going to be done to minimize down-time.

Bearing in mind the history of Media Player and the way non-standard,
proprietary, closed protocols or formats are used by its plugins, I don't
think compatibility with the conference calls plugin will be easy to achieve
with FreeBSD.  I'd be happy to be proven wrong here, but until then I doubt.

> . Zonealarm as my firewall, Norton Antirus.

Firewalls are a strong FreeBSD point.  ZoneAlarm has always annoyed me.  I am
more a fan of firewalls like ipfilter or pf, which don't depend on the program
name or the program's executable file name to work correctly.

FreeBSD has three different firewalls integrated into the system.  Their
close-integration with the system is an important point to note.  The
firewalls in our world are not third-party add-ons that may or may not work,
depending on how well they followed incomplete specifications about the
internals of a proprietary, closed system (like Windows).  They are developed
as part of the system itself, using the same procedures and QA processes that
the rest of the system uses.

Being available does not mean they are forced upon you either.  You have the
ultimate choice of using one, two, all three of them or none at all.

> . I'm using a home network connected to Rogers High Speed via DHCP protocol,
>   another machine is a XP laptop.

This should work too.

> My job is in Marketing field so I do need the system to be robust and more
> productivity. At the same time, I have the dream to play OS around and hack
> into the system at my spare time.

Robustness, stability of both runtime behavior and interface, performance and
security are fields in which FreeBSD excels.

Productivity is something that depends on the job you have to do, the tools
you choose to do it and the myriad of minor, subtle details that make a
difference while you work.  This is something that you will have to judge for
yourself though.  Nobody can tell you if you are going to be more productive
with FreeBSD, because nobody is... well... you.

> To be honest, I'm pretty happy with my current system with all the feature I
> specified.

You are happy with the current setup, but it's also nice that you consider
trying out something different.  The fact that you have no problem with your
current setup should weigh a lot more than anything else, if you ask me.

I'm not advocating that you should stick with Windows forever.  Just that you
should take your time and test FreeBSD for your type of work; test it as much
as you need, in order to decide if it can fit your style.

> Is there anybody could point out a way to play FreeBSD around and at the
> same time, I could perform my job easily? As I said, I need the Media Player
> plug in a lot, and any suggestion for a CRM software under BSD would be much
> appreciated.

My job is in software development.  Thus, I haven't used Media Player or any
sort of CRM application.  I'm sure that anyone who has and is a member of this
list will help you a lot more with these two.

Regards,
Giorgos