[thelist] nice easy Unix distro installation?

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at xevious.kicks-ass.net
Wed Sep 1 02:14:09 CDT 2004


On Tuesday 31 August 2004 06:39, sbeam wrote:
> Linux has a easier learning curve and generally smoother
> installations than BSD <duck>,

(By Linux I assume you meant GNU/Linux, since Linux by itself doesn't do 
a whole lot.)

Virtually all of my BSD installations (FreeBSD and OpenBSD) have gone 
through without a hitch. The one case where I ran into problems was 
because the hardware was questionable (possibly nearing or past 
end-of-life); after the failed OpenBSD install, a FreeBSD install also 
failed, and a Red Hat GNU/Linux install which previously ran without a 
hitch also failed.

OpenBSD's installer in particular is not for those who sit down at a 
computer and immediately reach for the mouse instead of the keyboard, 
those intimidated by typing, or those intimidated a lack of GUI. (Hell, 
it was enough to barely intimidate *me* on the first couple installs I 
did alone, and I like to think of myself as someone who is fearless 
about computer stuff.) If one can read and follow documentation and 
overcome any fear of text mode, though, one can get through it.

> My other tip is, if you are planning on running this on very old
> hardware (< 500Mhz CPU?) then don't bother installing KDE or Gnome,

KDE or Gnome will probably run decently on 350 MHz or so (I have used 
the former on a 400 MHz machine); I would not want to try running it on 
much less than that, especially with low memory (a 300 MHz computer 
with >=384M RAM would probably do okay depending on what else is 
running).

> if you must have a windowing system on it then try to get Fluxbox or 
> XFwm4 installed instead - 

Windowmaker is also good for low-end hardware.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn


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