user level

[Daniel Gerzo]

Hello conrad,

Saturday, August 19, 2006, 10:52:13 PM, you wrote:

> Dear Sir: I assembled my first computer in March of 2005. I am 56 years
> old. Since that time, I have built one tower and built a computer for
> myself. I have tried several times to install and run FreeBSD and ran
> into trouble configuring my internet connection via DHCP. I have started
> studying an older manual for BSD by Greg Lehey for 4.4BSD. I have a lot

This must be pretty old, you should rather start reading our Handbook
located at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/.
It's full of very good set of examples describing a lot of things you
can do with FreeBSD.

> to learn and I would love to install FreeBSD, but I am begining to
> wonder if I"m in over my head. Would it be necessary for me to take
> college courses in order to function in a BSD enviroment? I have
> survived some major problems with other operating systems. I have run
> and used:Fedora Core, Xandros, Ubuntu, installed Debian, DesktopBSD, and
> PCBSD; but, my dream is to run FreeBSD, but I have to be connected to

If you were able to live with operating systems listed above, you will
be surely able to install FreeBSD. There is no magic, believe me. Also
PCBSD and DesktopBSD are "forks" of FreeBSD so it's pretty much
possible that the configuration is the same, although I've never seen
these two.

> the Internet to conduct personal business. What must I know to configure
> sbcglobal.net to operate FreeBSD. And, do you think I need to learn a

If DHCP is all you need to setup your internet connection, there is
nothing easier you can have. Just put the installation CD into your
drive, boot it and when the sysinstall will ask you

"Do you want to try DHCP configuration of the interface?"

you will choose [ Yes ] button. That's all.

> lot more, or should I scrub the whole idea because it was meant for a
> educated programmer? If you find the time to answer me I'll be very
> grateful. I'll understand if you just refer me to the proper man or info
> pages. Thank you for your time. Yours, Conrad

-- 
Best regards,
 Daniel                            mailto:danger at FreeBSD.org