Rid of those Windows Desktops!

[Brian]

<Snip>
What exactly is "lots of RAM"? I think you should have 128MB for a graphical
environment, preferrably more if you want to run lots of memory-eaters (like
KDE). I've been happy for a long time with 256MB, now I have 512 and am even
more happy. =) But 128 to 256 should be sufficient under most conditions. If
they are at 1.9GHz, chances are rather good they have more than enough RAM.
=) As for CPU speed, a Pentium III 450 can make for a decent desktop
machine, so you've got nothing to fear, here...

Window Manager: I use Window Maker. I've been using it for some years now,
and I love it. It's easy to use, doesn't waste my ressources and it has
everything I need, namely virtual desktops. Plus, it has a sidebar that can
be extended with useful DockApps.

Email/Web: I use Firefox and Thunderbird happily. Again, they are quite easy
to use, not too ressource-hungry and got everything I need. 
Thunderbird has excellent junk-mail detection, Firefox has an extension
called AdBlock which does a great job at blocking ads.

For IRC i use xchat, though I gotta admit I just chose the first irc-client
that came to mind.

For programming I like gvim, since it's... well, vi plus some useful
enhancements. Emacs I just use for HTML... (Probably Emacs is great, but I
don't know any lisp and haven't had much success at learning it)

>Or point to some documentation on building a secure stable desktop 
>enviroment.
>  
>

Uh, the handbook? You can install it locally along with FreeBSD. I've you've
worked with FreeBSD before, you probably know it already.
Especially, you might want to look at
http://www.de.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop.html

Also, if you are willing to spend some money, "The Complete FreeBSD" by Greg
Lehey is really great. It's both a good beginner's introduction into various
tasks and a useful reference (it covers version 5.x). 
"Absolute BSD" by Michael Lucas is said to be good, too, but I don't know if
it covers 5.x.

<Snip>

Lots of ram is they all have at least 512mb.

I should take "Secure" out of there I'm fairly well up on FreeBSD Security
and all boxes are behind a well maintained FreeBSD Router/Firewall.

I have all those books :)

Cheers

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