Suitability question

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:25:51 -0500, Patrick Baldwin <Patrick.Baldwin at studsvik.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking I might be best of trying to built him a really 
> locked-down, high security
> box, almost an Internet appliance.  All he really does is use the Web, 
> and a little
> light word processing.
> 
> What do people think of FreeBSD as the base OS for this idea?  

hi Patrick,

I had a similar "problem" with my parents, so I built a
system (FreeBSD 6 were the times) which is completely
suffficient for their needs, similar as you mentioned
above, and it's still running today without any problems.

basically, the system runs XFCE 4, Firefox and Opera,
Sylpheed (as a standalone mail client), OpenOffice for
the usual office stuff, and some multimedia components
including mplayer and xmms.

If your father is interested in "Flash", well... there
*may* be problems using FreeBSD. With "problem" I mean
it's a bit more work to do for *you* in order to get it
up and running (configuration), but having a look at the
improving implementations of "Flash", it will be better
and better with most of the "Flash" polluted web sites. :-)

Everything else you mentioned is definitely *not* of any
kind of problem for FreeBSD.

Before installing anything new, try to monitor a bit
what your father does and how he does it. These observations
will help you to create a system that fits his needs
perfectly. Maybe XFCE 4 is not your way to go, maybe
KDE or Gnome are better.

Keep an eye on eventually present peripherials, such as
printers, digital cameras, USB sticks or MP3 players.
They need a bit more configuration ("automated wrapper
scripts") in order not to scare the user. It's not
impossible.

Trust me, I'm doing this since 4.0. :-)





-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...