New Users Learning FreeBSD

[anubis]

On Fri, 5 Mar 2004 6:16 pm, Loren M. Lang wrote:
> I am curious what some newbies experiences were with FreeBSD who
> have have no unix experience before.  I have someone that I might
> be setting up a unix workstation of some kind for and I'm debating
> whether I should use FreeBSD or some Linux distro like mandrake or
> debian.  I will be there most of the time to help if needed as this
> is for work and will not be his home desktop, at least not yet.  He
> only have some experience with using dos and windoze, but he does
> have some technical background with computers.

This is my opinion.  Your opinion and mileage may vary.

I dont think that something like mandrake is easier to use than 
freebsd.  They use the same applications and share the same window 
managers so if you do a good enough job of setting up freebsd it 
should be functionally the same or better than any linux distro.  

As far as maintaining the system what could be easier than the freebsd 
upgrade process?  For adding software the ports system is dead 
simple. 

As far as using unix, with both of them he is going to be on a 
learning curve if all he has known is windows.  I would say that the 
freebsd documentation is going to be of great help here.  You may 
wish to give him a book on freebsd to help.  I found Absolute BSD an 
excellent book that really helped me get to know the basics of 
freebsd.  

If freebsd is what you know and are using on your machine it will be 
easier for you management wise as you are only worrying about 1 os 
not 2.
Your friend will also recieve better support from you if it is 
something that you are comfortable with and are using yourself.

After using both I have personally found freebsd easier to use than 
linux.