[wplug-bsd] first BSD

[Bill Moran]

Chris Romano <romano.chris at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have had an interest in learn/playing with BSD for a while.  I was
> wondering if one is more newbie friendly the the others.  I know that
> each is different in one form or another but being based off of 4.?
> BSD lite (I think) they should be pretty similar.  I might be
> completely wrong on that assumption ...
> 
> Anyone have some suggestions?  I guess I am most interested in FreeBSD
> and OpenBSD.  I will probably try both at some point, though.  Just
> looking for a good starting point.

>From the newbie standpoint, FreeBSD is best.  Not only is it the most
aggresively developed (meaning that there are a lot of user-friendly
parts being worked on) but it also has the most actively maintained
documentation:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html

You're right that the BSDs are very similar, and once you've got over
the initial learning curve on FreeBSD, you should have a fairly easy
time of it with Net|OpenBSD.

FreeBSD does have the easiest install process of any of the BSDs by
a long shot.  You'll probably do well to wait a few weeks until the
5.3-STABLE version becomes official, and then start with that.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com