Unclear which version I should D/L...

[Shane Ambler]

On 27/10/2014 15:27, Adam Vande More wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 8:34 PM, Phil <phil at philseymour.net> wrote:
>
>> My apologies for raising what must appear to be a very basic question, but
>> I am attempting to crawl out of the clutches of Microsoft and have little
>> to no experience outside of the Windows domain.
>> Having carefully looked at the vast array of Linux and Unix distro’s
>> available, I am keen to install FreeBSD on a Sun Microsystems box that I
>> recently obtained through Ebay. The machine has dual x86 processors (AMD)
>> and 32 Gb RAM. The boot disks are SCSI Ultra 320’s.
>> I have looked at your download mirror sites but am a little confused as to
>> which version I should be getting.
>> Any help would greatly appreciated. Thank you.
>> Phil.
>>
>
> You'll want to get one of the AMD64 iso's from here:
>
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/10.0/
>
> I generally use the disk1 or memstick image to install OS then install
> packages from repo.  Don't forget to use freebsd-update after the install
> to get latest security patches.

+1 on amd64 version with it having 32GB RAM

I would say start with 10.1 - it is currently at RC3 with the final
release due within a couple of weeks.

There are several images to choose from -

bootonly will give you the smallest download to start up the machine,
and install the base system, then you can download just the packages
you want to install.

disc1 adds a collection of popular packages that can then be installed
without network access.

dvd1 expands the included packages.

memstick and mini-memstick are similar to disc1 and bootonly but setup
for usb memory sticks instead of cd/dvd media, for instructions on
putting the memstick images onto media see
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall-pre.html

Not sure about sun machines, if you have any trouble booting try one of
the uefi variations.

The ".xz" suffix refers to compressed images - not 100% sure that a
windows machine can de-compress them.

FreeBSD is a small base system that you can then install other things
like apache or mysql or maybe Xorg with KDE or gnome to get a gui. If
you aren't familiar with text only systems you may also want to consider
PC-BSD. It installs from a gui boot disk and has a preset setup that
will be familiar to anyone that has only used osx or windows. It also
includes gui tools to assist in updating or installing other
applications.

http://www.pcbsd.org/en/download.html

-- 
FreeBSD - the place to B...Serving Data

Shane Ambler