Rid of those Windows Desktops!

Henry Miller hmiller at intradyn.com
Thu Oct 21 06:25:55 PDT 2004



On 10/21/2004 at 14:07 Brian wrote:
>I've been planning this for sometime and finally have the time to do
it.
>
>We have various machines in the home no real fruity hardware,
everything
>seems to supported by all current versions of FreeBSD 4.9,4.10 5.2.1
etc
>
>I've used FreeBSD for a number of years but mostly in the work place
as
>Routers/Firewalls Webservers and file servers etc.
>
>I've never really put a lot of time into turning FreeBSD into a solid
work
>station which I'm sure it's more than able to be.
>
>For the most part all the workstations will be used for the usuall,
>web,email, irc and local development.
>
>Cutting the long story short for people who use FreeBSD as a desktop
>currently, what version is recommended at the moment for such a task.
>
>Most of the boxes have fairly good specs, 1.9GHZ plenty of hdd space
and
>lots of RAM.
>
>Can people recommend some nice window managers, email clients etc ?
>
>Or point to some documentation on building a secure stable desktop
>enviroment.
>
>I am doing my own searches too, I just like to hear from current
users.

The FreeBSD handbook is nice.   Don't be afraid to read linux
documentation, most of that applies.  Don't be afraid to try Linux or
netBSD for that matter, they have differences which may make them
better in some cases.  Though I've found FreeBSD nicer than all the
other systems I've tried, that is a personal choice.  

I like KDE.   Many others like it too.   You can get a useable
replacement desktop by just installing all of kde.  Many other people
like Gnome,  I've never used it so I can't say anything about it.  The
KDE guys like to point out the Gnome tries to make you do it their way
while KDE lets you configure everything to work like you want.  I don't
know what the Gnome guys say.   Try both and make your own decisions
(your users can make their own decision if you configure things right)

Unless you have slow machines (you don't) or are used to something
else, start with gnome or kde.   You can mix and match the two to some
extent.   Either alone will do everything you want.  There are better
programs for some things, but for the most part the best desktop apps
are part of either Gnome or KDE.   (plenty of exceptions to that rule,
but if you call it true you will avoid a lot of junk)





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