# New to the BSD Scene



## Sherpa (Jul 26, 2010)

Hey everyone,

I have recently been wanting to get into kernel hacking and system level work, and after a bit of research, it seems that FreeBSD would be the best choice. Do you think I made the right decision? (biased answers go!) I am experienced in C, x86 Assembly, and programming in general, so I am excited to get into the kernel...eventually. Coincidentally  I am purchasing a T42 IBM Thinkpad laptop soon, and after what I have been reading, I am going to use it solely for FreeBSD.

I used to use Linux a bunch, but really started to notice that it was starting to look like a real hack-job (my opinion, of course) the deeper I got into it. I hope a BSD is a bit better in this respect.

Getting prepared for my switch, I have been tinkering with the FreeBSD vanilla CLI in Virtual Box; it's fun :e! The ports system truly is neat.

Lastly, would you recommend a desktop environment for such a low powered computer? I'm probably going to just be in Emacs all day anyways. If you have any suggestions or advice for me, it would be greatly appreciated. Hope to see ya around!


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## lily (Jul 26, 2010)

Sherpa said:
			
		

> The ports system truly is neat.


I like pkgsrc more, it's not tied to a particular OS and tries to use human resources wisely. Besides, netbsd people are not afraid of improving their make(1) utility.





			
				Sherpa said:
			
		

> Lastly, would you recommend a desktop environment for such a low powered computer? I'm probably going to just be in Emacs all day anyways.


x11-wm/stumpwm


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## wblock@ (Jul 26, 2010)

The T42 runs FreeBSD very well, and xfce runs well on top of it.  With enough memory, the bigger Gnome or KDE should be fine, too.


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## vermaden (Jul 26, 2010)

Sherpa said:
			
		

> Hey everyone,
> 
> I have recently been wanting to get into kernel hacking and system level work, and after a bit of research, it seems that FreeBSD would be the best choice. Do you think I made the right decision? (biased answers go!)



If You like robustness, well thought/designed software and logic at the same time then you will feel very well at FreeBSD.



			
				Sherpa said:
			
		

> The ports system truly is neat.


Packages are better for day-to-day life.

1. On slower hardware compilation takes ages ...
2. On faster hardware You would not even feel the difference ...

The Ports system should only be used only if You MISS some features from th default packages or for updating the pacakges, any other way i wasting time 



			
				Sherpa said:
			
		

> Lastly, would you recommend a desktop environment for such a low powered computer? I'm probably going to just be in Emacs all day anyways. If you have any suggestions or advice for me, it would be greatly appreciated. Hope to see ya around!



I always use something light (openbox), no matter if its quad core or low voltage single core, its your preference here mate, its also depents how much RAM you have there, I would not run any big DE (KDE/GNOME) on top of 512MB.


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## trybeingarun (Jul 26, 2010)

Sherpa, generally using a mix of ports and packages should be avoided. This caused me enough trouble when I started using freebsd. I choose ports over packages because it has the latest software version. If you choose to use ports then make sure that you stick to one ports management utility because that also caused me a lot of trouble.


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## Sherpa (Jul 26, 2010)

I see that this good moved, I guess General wasn't the best place. Thanks for all the really informative posts guys 



			
				lily said:
			
		

> x11-wm/stumpwm


Woah, that looks perfect and cool to boot (Wow it's written in Lisp, I love it!)!



			
				wblock said:
			
		

> The T42 runs FreeBSD very well, and xfce runs well on top of it.  With enough memory, the bigger Gnome or KDE should be fine, too.


Hmm, I'm glad that it runs FreeBSD well. I don't think that I would use Gnome of KDE, though.



			
				trybeingarun said:
			
		

> Sherpa, generally using a mix of ports and packages should be avoided. This caused me enough trouble when I started using freebsd. I choose ports over packages because it has the latest software version. If you choose to use ports then make sure that you stick to one ports management utility because that also caused me a lot of trouble.


Thanks for the advice, I can see how mixing and match different utilities can just turn into a mess.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Jul 26, 2010)

```
portmaster -d p5-[something] p5-[something]
```
I use that cli a lot.
however, it seems to want to upgrade/install multiple ports
if more than one match , in other words if  a short port,
"di" I would use

```
portmaster -d sysutils/di
```
 so ten or so
would not be on the list to upgrade.  (dirdiff, dim, )
...

```
ncftp ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-8-stable/sysutils
```
If a port may take too much time or effort or won't build, I
like to fetch from upstream that way, first checking to 
make sure its version (upstream at ftp) is the same as the
Makefile version.
...
The majority of ports, though, I put a script together with
generic build commands, pkg_delete -f, etc ... useful because
with a few files present in the /port/ the script notifies 
if the build or run dependencies have changed and I can
abort, say, if gtk2 is now qt4 instead...


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