[CS-FSLUG] BSD?

[Ed Hurst]

On Monday 18 July 2005 00:16, Christopher Rose wrote:
> Hey, what is a good BSD distribution that I can try? I would like
> something that will fit onto a 2559.8 MB hard drive and preferably
> something that can be installed via floppy. If that won't work, can
> anyone suggest a way to set up a minimimal FreeBSD setup with X?
> Naturally I'd like to continue to use my ethernet connection via
> Qwest. Any help and or suggestions are appreciated.

I believe all of them (except PC-BSD) can be installed via FTP with a 
couple of boot floppies. You'll find FreeBSD closest to your experience 
among them. You can choose to avoid the heavier desktops by installing 
any light weight window manager from the list.

Keeping it on a small drive is rather difficult these days. Each of them 
sets up the drive in several "slices" (partitions) for dedicated use: 
swap, tmp, var, and "/". You won't be able to do many security updates, 
because that requires space to rebuild. You can get most non-system 
packages pre-built, but they are frozen with the release dates. 
Anything like OpenOffice you just about *have* to build, and with 
Mozilla's offerings you cannot update without building.

If you get a CD, you can install using the floppies over your network, 
reading the CD from another machine. I have copies of FreeBSD going 
back to 4.8. Keep in mind: very few security issues amount much more 
than local user threats, so it won't apply to you.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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