How did you come to the FreeBSD world?

I heard about ubuntu first in November last year and used it for a period.

Then I google linux and unix and find that FreeBSD is an open source unix system, hmmmm, I think it is the most stable OS that can be freely accessed to me in the world.
 
It's not an ideal world. The purpose, budget, and available hardware and software dictate the hardware platform(s) and operating system(s). FreeBSD suits me just fine at the moment.

In no particular order and certainly incomplete:

IBM 370 series
PDP-8 OS/8
DECsystem-10 TOPS-10
PDP-11 RSTS/E RSX-11M/M+ RT-11
TI 990/12 DX10
Data General MV8000 AOS/VS
VAX/VMS
Apple Mac OS
MS-DOS
Microsoft Windows (3.0 and up)
Alpha/OpenVMS
SCO Unix
386BSD
Linux
NetBSD
FreeBSD
 
My order:

C64
MSDOS
windows 3.1
windows 95
windows 98
Windows 98 / caldera open linux 1.2
Windows 98 / red-hat linux 5.0
--Checking local computer store for Linux I saw FreeBSD 2.2.6, the guy told me it's not Linux but similar, but I didn't want it --BIG Mistake..
windows 98 / Mandrake Linux 6.0
Windows 2000/ Mandrake Linux 7.0
Downloaded FreeBSD 4.0 was lazy to install it also read to wait for point realese..
Windows XP / Mandrake 8

Christmas holiday 2001 FreeBSD 4.4 installed on the dedicated machine as my router/server..
never looked back..

My server is FreeBSD my laptop is FreeBSD, second machine FreeBSD/ Windows XP

At work I admin CentOS and Windows servers, but I sneaked one production FreeBSD server doing FAMP/FTP, had other one but died :(. Tough to convince management to have more FreeBSDs.
 
A friend attending a university gave me an old Slackware Linux CD, and I liked it. Then when I got access to internet, a friend let me borrow his shell on the UK User Group's "dogma" machine, and I fell in love with how organized everything was.
 
Desktop: Slackware -> Gentoo -> Arch -> OpenBSD -> FreeBSD
Laptop: Ubuntu -> Fedora -> Slackware -> FreeBSD -> Gentoo -> Arch (majority of time)

I love Arch too much at the moment :( I won't be changing either for a long time.
 
Short paths:
(server) FreeBSD -> FreeBSD and some Linuxes -> FreeBSD

(desktop) DOS -> DOS + Windows 3.11 -> Windows 95 -> NT4 -> NT4 and Mac OS 7.5.3 -> NT4 and Mac OS 8 -> Windows 2000, Mac OS -> Windows 2003 -> Windows Vista + FreeBSD in VMware -> Windows 7 + FreeBSD in VMware

Long answer:

In 2001, we made the project to buy a dedicated server on my IRC channel.

We picked FreeBSD as operating system for a web/irc/mail server.

I don't remember the crucial factor but here some points leading to our decision:
(1) One of our users wanted to install gnuworld (it's the channel management service on Undernet, X) and at this time the howto were optimized for FreeBSD.

(2) Our sysadmin had a preference for FreeBSD (but I think we found it after the FreeBSD choice).

(3) This channel were a Windows support channel and we were tired of linux kiddies flooding our channel saying linux rulez, Bill gates is evil, Windows go to hell.

(4) FreeBSD had an excellent reputation on the Undernet IRC network, more than an half of the servers used on FreeBSD.

(5) They were some echo than FreeBSD were more stable than Linux.

(6) We were young males, teenagers or young adults. Beastie seemed more cool, virile and powerful than a pinguin.

Some months later, we needed more capacity and took a second server on Debian.

Meanwhile, our sysadmin resigned and if we had another sysadmin for the Debian box, I were the main sysadmin on the FreeBSD one. I so were able to compare Linux and FreeBSD and prefered a lot the FreeBSD one.

Probably the sockstat killer command and the port system.

Nowadays, I always use FreeBSD as server for 10 years.

For 4 years, I use also it as desktop coenvironment: my laptops are Windows + FreeBSD inside VMware. I'm happy to be able to get the advantages of the two worlds (ability to run demos - as demoscene releases - and apps like Photoshop, Excel or Visual Studio on Windows, to have a nice cli and Gnome to edit my web projects with a dev environment similar to the prod one FreeBSD side).
 
I learned Unix in college and really liked it. When I had the money, time and hardware I made the switch to FreeBSD and haven't looked back.
 
Well, i'm a Linux Users since 2000 but now im traying FreeBSD and I love it. I have been using FreeBSD for 3 weeks now and everyday I learn something new about this fantastic system.

I still use Linux but after this weeks i have to say: FreeBSD really rocks!!! ]=)
 
I was doing IT work experience at a company when I was 14? and saw one of the Tech Support guys running FreeBSD on a PC. At the time I had only really seen DOS and Windows (3.1/95) so I was quite interested but never done anything about it.

I left school in '98 and went to back to work there for a couple of months which is when the same guy gave me a couple of FreeBSD 3.3 CDs (iirc). I took them home and proceeded to accidently wipe my Windows 95/98 PC trying to partition the disk, needless to say I lost all my data and wasn't very happy. x( That attempt at FreeBSD ended there.

I left after a few months and went to do a desktop support job for a couple of years when out of the blue the same guy called me up asking if I wanted a job as a junior Tech Support person. I jumped at the chance and went back to work there with him and another "Linux" guy.
The servers there were a mix of Linux (SUSE) / FreeBSD4 and Windows NT4/2000 and I was going to be looking after them.
I obviously didn't have much *nix experience so they suggested I built myself another PC to help me learn. They both then argued for a while as to the best OS for me install, SUSE or FreeBSD. I went for SUSE initally but the kernel kept core dumping so I rebuilt it (with guidance!) with FreeBSD 4 which was fine (It turned out I had a memory fault but FreeBSD didn't seem to care so much). The FreeBSD guy also taught me 'vi' for which I am eternally grateful (Cheers Eddy :)).

That was all ~10 years ago and I've been using it ever since!

James
 
Atari -> Atari MiNT -> RedHat Linux -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> NetBSD. Today I use FreeBSD and Linux Fedora and I like porting linux software to FreeBSD.
 
XT, AT286, 386SX16, 386SX33, 386DX40 (wow, AMD, wow, this is fast, and I have 4 MB of RAM, wow, girls, do you see me? :p), 486SX, 486DX, forgot about what next because it was all called Pentium then. Dos 3.x (remember Wordperfect 5.0 :stud), Windows 2.x (lesson learned: stick with Dos and Wordperfect), Windows 3.0, WfW 3.10 & 3.11 (if I am correct), Win95, Win98SE, Win2000 (skipped NT4, never got it to install on my box), WinXP. In between a zillion attempts to install some Linux distro but managed to crash all of them within 1 hour after install. Then DesktopBSD (love and respect the initiative), also installed PC-BSD (didn't work), and finally FreeBSD in dual boot with XP until I have found suitable replacements for all the apps I use under XP, so I can delete that of my comp and use FreeBSD full time.
 
Dragon 32 -> Spectrum 128+2 -> Sinclair QL -> Amiga 600 -> Amiga 1200 -> Win 3.11 -> 98 -> Red Hat -> Debian -> Ubuntu -> FreeBSD exclusively on homebuilt systems.

Nothing remarkable really, but I think Ubuntu killed off the notion of Linux for me for the time being...... FreeBSD 'feels' right at the moment, but as in all things, it's a case of whatever floats your boat.;)
 
Windows XP -> Ubuntu -> Crap -> Crap -> Crap -> Gentoo (woot) -> Opensolaris && OS X -> FreeBSD

During the period of Crap -> Crap -> Crap I tried a wide variety of distros, from Ubuntu Distros to plain Debian, Slax to Slackware proper, Fedora and openSuse, vector, Sabayon, then from Sab I went to Gentoo. I was also a multibooting fiend at the time, having a desktop with three hard drives and 13 operating systems including most of those listed above, HURD, OpenBSD, Minix, XP, and Vista (this was before W7).

Eventually I stuck with Opensolaris on the desktop and OS X on a Macbook I bought. Then when signs started looking bad for Opensolaris I found FreeBSD to offer what I needed. Only then I came to appreciate FreeBSD for itself and not for being a second-best-after-Opensolaris.
 
I was using Win XP, long time ago, and at that point i thought there are only Windows operating systems ( :shamed :r ) .
Then I heard of friend of mine for Ubuntu and I was like "WOW, that exists?". I was thrilled.
I thought that was it. And then I registered to one cool forum, where you could see under someones profile , which OS is he using.
And at one cool guy, I saw Free BSD.
Huh, i was wandering what is this?
Then I started googling, and step by step, discovering this amazing world.I installed it and never came back.
That is my story.
 
Dad works for google, gave me a thinkpad w/ broken windows installation, a freebsd unleashed book and freebsd5 cds told me to learn it and then sent me to school for a CIS degree. 2 1/2 years later here I am. As far as whoever says windows is a bloated operating system though, what the hell, do you know about technology? do you realize you can get a desktop system with an 8 core 64 bit processor, 10 gigs of ram and a terabyte + gigabit nic for less than $2000? who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant
 
my boss has been using freebsd so I wanted to see how does it look like on the desktop. unfortunately, during installation I had screwed up with bootmanager and therefore windows refused to boot. without knowledge on how to fix it I had no other choice than compiling X and KDE (till that time I've heard only about KDE and Gnome, but KDE required less dependencies to build)
half-year have passed and I still don't want to restore Windows because I don't need it anymore
 
mharvey87 said:
who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant

With a system like that, even a bloated operating system will run fast... However, something like FreeBSD with openbox will still run faster. I like faster.

:)
 
mharvey87 said:
Dad works for google, gave me a thinkpad w/ broken windows installation, a freebsd unleashed book and freebsd5 cds told me to learn it and then sent me to school for a CIS degree. 2 1/2 years later here I am. As far as whoever says windows is a bloated operating system though, what the hell, do you know about technology? do you realize you can get a desktop system with an 8 core 64 bit processor, 10 gigs of ram and a terabyte + gigabit nic for less than $2000? who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant

Your obviously not a programmer.
 
mharvey87 said:
As far as whoever says windows is a bloated operating system though, what the hell, do you know about technology? do you realize you can get a desktop system with an 8 core 64 bit processor, 10 gigs of ram and a terabyte + gigabit nic for less than $2000? who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant

That sort of setup is still going to be way out of the price range for a lot of people. Plus, why even worry about bloat when you can use a system that doesn't have bloat in the first place ( not to mention the proprietary nature of the systems )?
 
I first noticed FreeBSD when I saw the slides for FreeBSD 7 and how well it scaled with the ULE scheduler compared to Linux (on Slashdot or something). After some reading on the internet and a fine article on the differences between Linux and FreeBSD (http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01), I ditched Linux as my hobby OS for FreeBSD. Although I'm forced to use Windows at work, here is the transition in my personal OS:

Windows 3.1 --> Windows 98 --> Windows XP --> Mandriva/SuSE --> Ubuntu --> Fedora --> FreeBSD
 
In the spring of 2000, I started dabbling with BigSlack on my Windows 98 install. I liked it, and setup a dual boot arrangement. I had a lot of trouble matching any documentation to my installation, so I then tried more popular distros, and hated each one for various reasons.

Right around the time I was tiring of fiddling with distros and all that, someone on a chat room suggested FreeBSD. That was around November of 2000, which means that it was almost precisely a decade ago. 4.2-RELEASE had just come out at the time.
 
windows growing at home 3.1 - 95. didn't have any money in college, but I had friends who were ee majors. they would let me into their computer lab which was all BSD, to do my biology papers with latex. once i had money to buy computer parts for myself, I just kept using bsd.
 
Some needs:
* Web Developing on the stable surface (HTTPD/PGSQL/Perl/PHP) - *WAMP* are not practical for designing real systems!
* Tracing Kernel Codes - I like it.
* BSD Licence
* Port Collection
* Centralized Community

Linux community just reinvent the wheel for many years, So I love FreeBSD.
 
Back
Top