New to FreeBSD/UNIX

[Jerry McAllister]

> 
>   I am new to UNIX, and want to download a basic UNIX system, just to
>   run commands and become familiar with the system.  I wish to use this
>   system as a companion piece to a UNIX tutorial which I have on DVD. I
>   do not want to replace Windows at this time.
> 
>   My PC has:  Pentium III Processor at 1GHz, 128MB RAM at 133 MHz,
>   Windows ME operating system.
> 
>   What course of action do you recommend that I take?

Someone suggested finding out what your guide book covered, but
presuming it is pretty generic, FreeBSD will be fine to learn on.

Since you want to leave your MS stuff on the machine, you have
two choices.  One is to shrink the disk slice that MS is using
to make room for the other OS (FreeBSD).   -- You didn't mention
how much room you have on your disk, but I would suggest you
want 10 GB or more to play with unless you don't plan to add Xwindows
or a web server or an office system (OpenOffice) or a desktop/X manager.

The other choice is to scrounge up another box to play with or 
at least to add another disk to the one you have.

For shrinking the space that MS is using, I have had good luck
with a product called Partition Magic.   It is not freeware - around $70
and available from online stores and in places like Best Buy.
There are a couple of Freeware utilities, and I think they work OK
on plain vanilla FAT16 and FAT32 MS file systems, but they will not
handle NTFS and some of the newer extended/logical "partitions" and I
have had to muck with those.  PM works fine on those too.

Presuming you have disk space ready and are prepared to go,
then:
  Download and burn or buy the latest FreeBSD ISO installation CD.
  If you have a fast network connection, just use the first boot-only
  CD and install everything else over the net.   If your are on dial-up,
  get both CD-1 and CD-2.

  Plug in the CD and boot the machine.

  select doing the standard install

  Choose to install everything including the ports and X-Windows

  Put real life values in the network configuration screen.

  Specify your disk divisions and tell it to install the FreeBSD MBR
  (top choice of three)

  Make sure you hit the 's' in the fdisk part to make the slice bootable.

  How you divide the FreeBSD slice is by personal preference.
  I might suggest making at least:
   /    (eg root)
   swap
   /tmp

  If you have disk room to divide up more, then add some of
  /usr
  /var
  /home
  The ones you do not create special room for will end up just
  being in /  so that has to have enough room.

If you make separate partitions for /usr and /var and /home, then
your root can be small.  I would say at least 128 MB, maybe 192 MB.

Swap should be at least twice your installed memory.

/tmp seems to be good at around 512 MB, although most of the time
half that would be OK.
  
The /usr partition needs to be rather big if you install a lot of
ports.    I have used up more than 10 GB in /usr doing installs before.
That was when I built some things like OpenOFfice from ports instead
of just using packages.

/var gets a lot of things like logs and spool files (for printers and 
Email and databases, etc)  If you don't do much with the machine, you 
can get by with less than 1 GB /var, but if you do a lot, go for 3 or 4 GB.  

Then, let the install rip.   
When it gets done, run xorgcfg to configure X and learn how to set
up a windows manager.   I use Afterstep.   Some like to push KDE or
Gnome, but they are overkill for me.    For Afterstep, you can edit
the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc to make it come up with 
the windows and fonts you want.

You can also edit the file:   /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/afterstep/system.steprc

if you want to use Afterstep.  I just change it so when I click on the
Netscape icon it brings up firefox instead of Netscape, since Netscape 
is gone, but still referenced by default.   Guess I could put in a new
icon too, but I haven't bothered.

Of course, you will want to install Firefox and Thunderbird as browsers
or if you use KDE, just use what it has.

If you want it to receive Email, put   sendmail_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf.

The rest is all just fun to experiment and play with.

Have fun,

////jerry

> 
>   Thanks.
> 
> 
>   Ed Powers
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