Ok guys here I go. I want to try BSD but I'm not sure which one to try. You've probably heard this before but I'm a Linux guy and I am really just curious. I would prefer to just do a clean hard drive install and have BSD function as a desktop. I will not dual boot, it's got 2.4 Ghz, 40 GB HD, and 512 mb of RAM. I do not need wifi or printing or some ridiculous proprietary drivers. What I will need is flash, mp3/mp4, and dvd playback support.
I was looking at PcBSD because it seems simpler to use and because it comes with multimedia and flash codecs already. Then I did some reading that FreeBSD is the mother of that "distro" (or whatever they are called) so I was wondering what the difference is.
I noticed on distrowatch.com that FreeBSD is more popular than PcBSD. Is that because FreeBSD can do everything PcBSD can do and more?
Lastly, I understand BSD is not Linux and I can accept that there will be some bit of a learning curve and that is ok it is why I want to do this. What does package management work like in BSD? Does package management work in a similar way as apt-get or yum? Or is it from source and more like Slackware tarballs? In other words do the BSD package managers resolve dependencies for me?
I know I have a lot of questions and I apologize for it. I appreciate any help you all can offer.
I was looking at PcBSD because it seems simpler to use and because it comes with multimedia and flash codecs already. Then I did some reading that FreeBSD is the mother of that "distro" (or whatever they are called) so I was wondering what the difference is.
I noticed on distrowatch.com that FreeBSD is more popular than PcBSD. Is that because FreeBSD can do everything PcBSD can do and more?
Lastly, I understand BSD is not Linux and I can accept that there will be some bit of a learning curve and that is ok it is why I want to do this. What does package management work like in BSD? Does package management work in a similar way as apt-get or yum? Or is it from source and more like Slackware tarballs? In other words do the BSD package managers resolve dependencies for me?
I know I have a lot of questions and I apologize for it. I appreciate any help you all can offer.