My first day as a FreeBSD user... UPDATE: 1 year later

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bigtoque

I've been playing around with FreeBSD for about 6 months now and today I finally ditched Windows.

There are a few things I simply haven't been able to figure out, but figured it wasn't enough to prevent the move.

I just wanted to say thanks for a great and free OS.

(edit: and thanks for all the help on the forums :p)


*UPDATE: 1 year later*

Well, it's been a year and I've survived with only FreeBSD. I've gone from a total noob, to a slightly less total noob :p

I've become fairly comfortable navigating the system. I've spent lots of time installing/upgrading programs (I love using the ports system), spent time with many different desktop environments and window managers, built and installed kernels, moved from RELEASE onto STABLE, etc.

One goal for this year is to start learning a little more about the command line. Scripting seems like such a powerful thing and I'm very eager to see what I can do. I'm also interested in learning about porting. Every once and a while I come across some software that I'm interested in trying out that isn't in ports and it would be nice to know how to go about getting it running. One of these days I'd like to contribute back to the community.

I bought the books "Absolute FreeBSD" and "Linux and the Unix Philosophy". Both were good reads. By the time I got Absolute FreeBSD I had already become somewhat familiar with a number of things in the book. The book definitely made some things more clear and I know it'll be a great reference for things I haven't spent much time with yet.

Here's to another great year!
 
Pretty big leap. I made the switch back from apple OS7. Which was the first gui I had used as my previous machine from that was an apple ][e.

I used fluxbox (and later e16) as a gui for many years forcing myself off the icon style desktop and used the terminal (even when it seemed painful) to fulfill common usage in the OS.

aragon is correct. It's good to be free.

Congrats on the switch.
 
bigtoque said:
There are a few things I simply haven't been able to figure out, but figured it wasn't enough to prevent the move.
Click to expand...

That's how I finally made the move to a Linux (and, later, FreeBSD) desktop. Test the water, measure the depth, and then canonball in with reckless abandon. You'll be forced to either figure out or somehow "work around" your problems.

Get ready to do some tinkering. And get ready to learn a whole lot more about OSes - and unix philosophies in particular. Both are good things. :)
 
Congrats! The learning curve is a bit steep but the FreeBSD documentation is top notch & this forum & daemonforum are great for newbies cutting their teeth :)
 
Welcome to the free world! :e

I'll second what the others have said about the learning curve being steep but well worth the effort. It might take a while before the Unix way of doing things starts to click for you, but once it happens, you'll wonder why you ever used anything else.

For some background reading, I highly recommend Eric Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming or Mike Gancarz's Linux and the Unix Philosophy. Both of these guys favor Linux rather than one of the BSD's, but they do an excellent job explaining the why's and wherefore's of the Unix way of doing things.

For FreeBSD, read the Handbook first, of course. Then, if you need more in-depth coverage of configuration, etc., you can't beat Michael Lucas's Absolute FreeBSD.

The OS is free, but -- except for the Handbook -- the books are not. But unlike books about Windows, which aren't good for anything except the trash after a few years, books about Unix have a very long useful shelf-life. I have several that were printed in the 1980's and most of their contents are still applicable. This is a side-benefit of an OS that isn't driven by marketing concerns and the need to drive users to buy the latest version.

The same thing that keeps those old books useful also preserves the value of any knowledge you acquire about Unix. I used to work for Microsoft, and at one time was considered something of an MFC expert. But by now MFC has changed so much and has been replaced by so many other programming models, that everything I used to know about it has become practically useless.
 
*UPDATE: 1 year later*

Well, it's been a year and I've survived with only FreeBSD. I've gone from a total noob, to a slightly less total noob :p

I've become fairly comfortable navigating the system. I've spent lots of time installing/upgrading programs (I love using the ports system), spent time with many different desktop environments and window managers, built and installed kernels, moved from RELEASE onto STABLE, etc.

One goal for this year is to start learning a little more about the command line. Scripting seems like such a powerful thing and I'm very eager to see what I can do. I'm also interested in learning about porting. Every once and a while I come across some software that I'm interested in trying out that isn't in ports and it would be nice to know how to go about getting it running. One of these days I'd like to contribute back to the community.

I bought the books "Absolute FreeBSD" and "Linux and the Unix Philosophy". Both were good reads. By the time I got Absolute FreeBSD I had already become somewhat familiar with a number of things in the book. The book definitely made some things more clear and I know it'll be a great reference for things I haven't spent much time with yet.

Here's to another great year!
 
bigtoque said:
*UPDATE: 1 year later*

Well, it's been a year and I've survived with only FreeBSD. I've gone from a total noob, to a slightly less total noob :p

I've become fairly comfortable navigating the system. I've spent lots of time installing/upgrading programs (I love using the ports system), spent time with many different desktop environments and window managers, built and installed kernels, moved from RELEASE onto STABLE, etc.

One goal for this year is to start learning a little more about the command line. Scripting seems like such a powerful thing and I'm very eager to see what I can do. I'm also interested in learning about porting. Every once and a while I come across some software that I'm interested in trying out that isn't in ports and it would be nice to know how to go about getting it running. One of these days I'd like to contribute back to the community.

I bought the books "Absolute FreeBSD" and "Linux and the Unix Philosophy". Both were good reads. By the time I got Absolute FreeBSD I had already become somewhat familiar with a number of things in the book. The book definitely made some things more clear and I know it'll be a great reference for things I haven't spent much time with yet.

Here's to another great year!
Click to expand...

Well done!

List of things to learn about FreeBSD: http://www.bsdcertification.org/downloads/certreq_bsdp_en.pdf

When I look at it I feel very motivated :)
 
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