Boot disk question (was "No Subject")

[Willie Viljoen]

On Tuesday 08 April 2003 13:02, someone, possibly Steve Moss, typed:
> So I got a CD of FBSD 5.0. I can't even find "makeflp" or whatever you
> write the boot disks with on Windows. (too old to boot from CD) (not me
> the computers).

The tools to create the two disk set, aswell as the images for the two disks 
are available on the FreeBSD 5.0 CD1. If you have the mini-CD, you may or 
may not have these tools, I do not have a mini-CD here to check this.

The images are in the floppies/ directory in the root of the CD. In that 
directory is also a README file with instructions for creating the disk 
set. The fdimage tool (aswell as other tools, partition splitters, 
alternative bootloaders, etc) are available in tools/ also in the root of 
the CD.

> Is it worth me persevering with BSD? I do really need a GUI because my
> customers aren't that pioneering - they've emerged from the 2nd millenium
> like everyone else - as babies who can only point and click. So what do
> you think? Shall I go on to ask how to make boot floppies from my BSD cd?

It is most certainly worth it. CD1 includes both the KDE and GNOME GUIs, 
both very good and easily upgradable from the internet with portupgrade. 
They require a certain level of power though, I would say atleast a 300MHz 
CPU and no less than 128MB of RAM, the more the better.

For less powerful systems, you might want to look at WindowMaker. It is a 
simple, yet powerful and relatively easy to use window manager that, with 
minimal training, will let your users do most of what they can do with 
other systems. Windowmaker should be on one of the FreeBSD CDs, though it 
might not be on CD1. It is also available in ports.

For more information on installing or upgrading from ports, after 
installing, check the FreeBSD handbook in 
/usr/share/doc/handbook/index.html, or online at http://www.freebsd.org/. 
The Handbook has also been translated into German. If you install the doc 
distribution, this will be in /usr/share/doc/, it is also available at the 
web site above.

Hope this helps
Will

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Willie Viljoen
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will at unfoldings.net