Being in IT business for over 10 yrs, MCSE and CCNA, I thought that it would be great to find an alternative OS. Started out with Fedora 9 - 5 installs, 5 crashes to a black screen of death. Ubuntu, hmm, 8.04 lts - pulse audio F...d,8.10 - network manager booboo, 9.04 - Intel GMA 950 driver chews up swap - in 6 hrs 2GB swap is full. Wonder why MS still around? LOL.
Aside from pirated OSX, FreeBSD seemed logical choice to try.
Install on Dell Studio 540 with Intel Q9550( which is supported by FBSD)leads me to two problems.
1. Boot after install yields error: F1. Pressing it starts boot. Annoying though.
FAQs suggest installing small dos partition, so OS picks up right HDD geometry on reinstall. Can't do that-this box ain't booting into GParted or PartMagic. Is there more elegant, native solution for that?
2. No usb mouse. Which is generic MS USB mouse. Enabled HAL in rc.conf, as suggested by the Book, no go.
Someone in some forum is positive that I need to compile custom kernel, so module can be loaded for this mouse. Q. Is FBSD plug and play? Is there a way to enable this mouse without years taken away from my life?LOL.:e
I realize that FBSD, being primarily server platform, is configurable mostly through SSH command line
. And, obviously, I like tinkering with stuff, as I did some reading before this not so little project.
Any input is welcome. Thank you.
Aside from pirated OSX, FreeBSD seemed logical choice to try.
Install on Dell Studio 540 with Intel Q9550( which is supported by FBSD)leads me to two problems.
1. Boot after install yields error: F1. Pressing it starts boot. Annoying though.
FAQs suggest installing small dos partition, so OS picks up right HDD geometry on reinstall. Can't do that-this box ain't booting into GParted or PartMagic. Is there more elegant, native solution for that?
2. No usb mouse. Which is generic MS USB mouse. Enabled HAL in rc.conf, as suggested by the Book, no go.
Someone in some forum is positive that I need to compile custom kernel, so module can be loaded for this mouse. Q. Is FBSD plug and play? Is there a way to enable this mouse without years taken away from my life?LOL.:e
I realize that FBSD, being primarily server platform, is configurable mostly through SSH command line

Any input is welcome. Thank you.