BSD Question's

[Victor]

> 
>         To whom this may concern,
>         H-E-L-P!
>         LOL!
>          I've been online since 1992( the windows 3.1 days for me.)
>         I'm 48 yrs.old. and also a windows XP
>         user.
>          Because of recent issue I have had with Mr. William Gates and
>         his product.
>         about every 6 months I have had to overhaul my windows XP.
>         during the last up grade I was told
>         that my XP product code was invaild, then when is made the
>         repair up grades something in my
>         registory changed, and when that auto updater downloaded the
>         new security patches it somehow
>         downloaded 2969 trojans as well.
>         
>          I have decided to start the search for a new OS.
>         In my case the new OS must be completely 100 percent user
>         friendly.
>         Please bare in mind that 100 percent means "NO CODE" writting.
>         I'm not a programer...LOL!
>          I run a very small one man company at,
>         http://www.geocities.com/andy_sjostrom/index.html
>         
>          From time to time I also like to rip and burn a CD as well,
>         Publish articles to my yahoo 360 blog. edit a few images from
>         time to to time.
>          surf the net, copy and paste, chat with friends in my
>         favorite yahoo chat room.
>          fold protiens for the fold at home project at stanford U.
>         (I'm on team #40154.)
>          I also have a logitech Clicksmart420 that the new OS must be
>         willing to accept.
>         I've been doing some reading and every thing I have been able
>         to find for OS's boils down to three
>         basic choices.
>         BSD
>         Unix
>         Linux
>         A windows Hybird like ReactOS.
>         
>         There is one other very important thing Because I'm on a fixed
>         income and things with me are very
>         tight money wise the new OS must be free.
>          Is there any thing you can do to help me. Such as point me in
>         the right direction.

Hello Andy

I'm also on a fixed income, and have had to find an alternative OS.
There are many choices, so some experimentation will be needed to find
what works best for *you*.

That being said, you might want to try a more user-friendly version of
of FreeBSD that I've had excellent experiences with called PC-BSD.

http://www.pcbsd.org/

I've installed it on a number of machines, including my sisters' PC and
my girlfriends' PC. I'm writing this from a PC-BSD install. PC-BSD has
an extremely simple installer, very newbie-friendly and very quick
(about 25 minutes until you're booting into your new desktop). It also
has a software package system that is point-and-click. (PC-BSD can also
use the FreeBSD "ports" software package system as well, and the ports
collection is *huge*.)

PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD 6.0 and runs very fast, even on older or more
basic hardware. It has many GUI tools and I hardly ever need to do any
command-line stuff for most system admin tasks.

There are packages to install Java and Flash plugins. The Gaim package
is quite usable in Yahoo chat, and even fairly boot-resistant. You can
also install Gyach (a *nix-land Y-chat client) from the standard FreeBSD
ports. Unfortunately, Gyach has no voice or video support. (I've yet to
be booted using PC-BSD/Gyach though, and they've sure tried! ;) )

There is a linux distro I looked at called "alinux" (formerly was
"Peanut Linux") that strives to be a windows replacement and has
Gyach-Enhanced, a Y-chat client that does support voice and video, in
the default install. The alinux installer is more clunky than PC-BSD,
and requires a bit more knowledge.

http://www.alinux.org/

I have to say that in my experience, I prefer FreeBSD/FreeBSD-based OSes
to linux. FreeBSD has less "bloat" and seems to outperform linux
speed-wise on the hardware I've tried. It just "feels" more stable to me
also. (Something that my girlfriend and sister have both told me,
without prompting, that they both noticed and liked).

There is some learning to do with any new OS, but I've found
PC-BSD/FreeBSD to be worth the effort, and things are laid out quite
logically once you get used to it. The documentation is excellent and
there are numerous forums and other user resources.

Good luck!
Hope that helps :)

Victor