Newbie - Old laptop

coverslide

coverslide

I am a new user who wants to give FreeBSD a try. I'm thinking about PC-BSD, but the only computer I have at my disposal is an old 5-year old Compaq Presario 2100, 40GB space, 768 MB RAM. I'm wondering if this would be a problem. Also I don't like having a /PCBSD directory, but I'm not sure if I can deal with FreeBSD just yet. Also, I definitely want wireless working, will the installer be able to help me with this or will I need to do some extra work? I believe it's an old Intel wireless device. I've looked up "wireless FreeBSD" on google and I nearly wet my pants. I had Ubuntu running on it 4 years ago, wireless and all, with no problems, so I'm hoping FreeBSD can do the same without too much trouble. Any suggestions? Thanks
 
5 years isn't that terrible, & 40G is plenty of space (if you aren't going to try to build openoffice or java from source).

The trick is going to be your wireless card. $ lspci -lv from a terminal in Ubunutu (I think I remember that right) is your friend. Once you know the chipset and revision, try googling that +freebsd.

Setting up wireless is a whole lot less point-n-click than Ubunutu, but not much harder. The handbook is a bit out of date for 8.0: you need to set up wlan(4) on your interface via /etc/rc.conf and then use your wlan0 just like a normal wireless device.

Also, a healthy wpa_supplicant.conf(5) is quite handy. wpa_supplicant(8) is useful even for unsecured access points.
 
I probably could be stoned to death for saying this here :) Try OpenBSD...I've got it running on older laptops with less HD space and it detected the wireless during installation and set it up. Of course I don't need flash on this so it may make a difference if you do.
 
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