FW: RE: FreeBSD starter machine...

[Harrison Peter CSA BIRKENHEAD]

>Message: 16
>Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:07:44 -0800 (PST)
>From: "Matt S. Gann" <mattgann2003 at yahoo.com>
>Subject: FreeBSD starter machine
>To: freebsd-questions at FreeBSD.org
>Message-ID: <20051212040744.66038.qmail at web54201.mail.yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1.
>
>  I have a few questions about FreeBSD.  I am just beginning to get into UNIX.  I know a  >few line commands, but really want to get familiar and comfortable with the OS.  I have
>been intrugued by FreeBSD for many years now, but I own a windows-based PC and am not keen >about running dual OS's.  I would like to get a cheap, used, small desktop or laptop to >"tinker" with Unix/Linix and FreeBSD.  However, I know little to nothing about system 
>requirements and/or hardware compability.  I was thinking of an old 486 or Pentium 1 to 
>get started.  Any thoughts on what I could start with?
   
>  Sincerely,
>  Matt S. Gann

In the past I've run 4.6 on a P1 133mhz with 64MB RAM and a 3GB disk. More recently I was running 5.3 on a Thinkpad 600e PII 333mhz with 160MB RAM and 2GB slice within the disk (until the hardware died). Although the OS ran fine on both of these there are limitations. You'd probably need to steer clear of the more 'newbie' friendly window managers such as Gnome or KDE (both the above ran Fluxbox handily to save on both speed and diskspace), and that may effect the required learning curve.

You could also forget running OpenOffice or Firefox. My own current desktop (running 6.0-RELEASE) is based on an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256MB RAM and 10GB slice on the disk, and it doesn't leave me with so many limitations on what I can run. My guess is you could pick something with a similar spec up very cheaply so I'd probably be thinking around the 1ghz + CPU with reasonable RAM and disk as a starting point.

HTH.


Peter.


Peter Harrison 



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