question?

[Jerry McAllister]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 09:36:14PM -0500, Roofscum614 at aol.com wrote:

> hi i am doing a project for school:
>  
> find an alternative operating system - one that will run my  computer
> without Windows being installed.  The cheaper the better (Hint  start your
> search with the word "free").  Find out what the software  does, what
> applications it supports (e.g., will it run Microsoft Office), how  much it
> costs. 


You have found a good one.

You need to go to the FreeBSD web site  www.freebsd.org   and do a lot
of reading, both the handbook and the FAQ as well as other sites that
are pointed to.

FreeBSD is indeen free to download and use.   You would need to burn
your own installation CD (disk1).  Optionally, there are a couple of
companies who make up a package of pre-burned CDs and a printed handbook
and sell them for a nominal price - and most donate a small part of that
to the FreeBSD foundation..

FreeBSD has more than 10,000 software utilities that have been ported
to run on it.   Check our ports on the FreeBSD web site.   It does not
run Microsoft software directly, but many of those ports are worthy
substitutes for the MSU software.   For example, there is a package
called 'Openoffice' that does most of the stuff MS Office can do.
It's word processor is called swriter and can read and/or create files
in MS-Word format as well as some others.   It has a spread sheet,
and presentation (power point) utility, etc.

There are even desktop oriented window managers such as KDe if you
must have all the pointy-clicky stuff (prefer a command line interface
for most thing so don't bother with KDE).

But, you must know that even though you can get a lot of questions
answered here, you must do the work yourself.   FreeBSD is not 
oriented toward preventing you from learning things and managing
your own machine like some Northwest USA companies seem to want to do.
That takes some effort, but results in a more powerful environment
once you get things under control.

So, download the ISO, burn it and install it and start esperimenting
and learning and doing some actual computer work.

////jerry

> 
> 
> does your OS relate to this project? any help would be appreciated.
>  
> thank  you
> tom gunderman
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