I need a freebsd 5.3 desktop server; recommendations?

Chris Hill chris at monochrome.org
Sun Jun 18 23:39:28 UTC 2006


On Sun, 18 Jun 2006, Dan Bikle wrote:

> http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=3762910

[...]

> It is so cheap I'm tempted to buy it and take the risk that I could 
> install a recent version of FreeBSD on it.

[...]

> Would you gamble $368 that you could get FreeBSD installed on this 
> thing?

For a basic server, I probably would. But I would not count on the 
integrated graphics being useable in X. Especially since the page says 
"Integrated Graphics up to 64 MB, default setting 32 MB", which leads me 
to think that this integrated graphics thingy uses system memory, which 
would be taken out of the not-overly-generous 512 MB. It will almost 
certainly work for your VGA console.

I also wouldn't count on the integrated sound or even ethernet. The 
modem, I can just about guarantee, is a winmodem and thus probably not 
useable. But in all cases, it's hard to know for sure since they don't 
say what the hardware is. The keyboard and mouse will probably work 
fine.

The subject line says "desktop server". My take is that it would be iffy 
as a desktop (might work, you never know) but probably fine as a 
light-duty server, although you may need to add a $10 ethernet card.

I'd just double-check their return policy; if it turns out not to be 
what you wanted, send it back and keep looking.

HTH.

--
Chris Hill               chris at monochrome.org
**                     [ Busy Expunging <|> ]


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