# How did you come to the FreeBSD world?



## Alt (Jun 15, 2010)

Wanna to see some special stories. 
What you used before, how switched to our dear FBSD? :beergrin


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## nekoexmachina (Jun 15, 2010)

Windows (since 95? 98?) till 2004, then about a year with Mandrake 10. But that time there was no almost internet connection (pretty expencive dial-up), and i was forced to use wine for many apps, and that sucked. In 2006-7 i've became a member of local lan network with unlimited internets, and so installed ubuntu. To the end of year i became gentoo user, than arch. After hw-update in middle-2008 or something iowait came to me, and i was searching for alternatives. Due to some bad info about BSD family from russian linux/unix-users web-site first i was trying to use windows with cygwin, which was not too bad, but still not good enough, so i've tried out linux zen-kernel (i didn't do that before cause linux kernel compilation and configuration is the almost worst thing i hate about linux usability. menuconfig & .config with non-obvious params both suck. The worst one is repos: you have two variants, one is to use pretty old sw like in debian stable, second one is to use pretty up-to-date sw like in rolling-release distros, but if you want to install some sw or update your distro after 2-3 month of no-updates - get ready to run around in pain with anger) After couple of failures (kernel with compiled-in drivers had some huge troubles with my sata, and with modules there were troubles, too, not huge as monolith-kernel, but still) i've decided, wtf, if my local linux community guys love _this_, BSD could not suck as hard as they say.


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## mickey (Jun 15, 2010)

ATARI XL, ATARI ST, 386 BSD, FreeBSD ever since


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## Anonymous (Jun 16, 2010)

sossego posted a how-to at another forum.


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## aragon (Jun 16, 2010)

Desktop: DOS->Win3.1->OS/2->WinNT->BeOS->WinXP->FreeBSD
Server: WinNT->Redhat->Slackware->Debian->FreeBSD

Eventually all roads lead to FreeBSD.


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## dennylin93 (Jun 16, 2010)

Tried out Windows, Fedora, and Ubuntu before using FreeBSD. Someone introduced me to FreeBSD in my first year of high school, and I have been using it ever since.


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## DrJ (Jun 16, 2010)

I used Berkeley Unix in grad school.  Hey -- it was Berkeley, and it was everywhere.  Went through SunOS, Windows (all colors) and have wound up back home.


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## carlton_draught (Jun 16, 2010)

Desktop: MSX->C64->DOS->Win3.1->Win95->WinXP->Ubuntu->FreeBSD

I'm still using Ubuntu for day to day stuff on 2 other machines until I have everything sufficiently working on FreeBSD, so that I can properly experiment.

I am not including several abortive attempts at running Redhat, Corel, Mandrake, Debian, SUSE, Puppy, DSL, PCLinuxOS and probably others I forget, that took place during the Win95 and WinXP years.

Server: CentOS -> FreeBSD

Network box: (Played around with monowall, IPCop, OpenBSD, ClarkConnect first), PFSense -> Zeroshell

Why FreeBSD? I'd still be using Ubuntu if it wasn't for the possibility to eliminate silent data corruption with ZFS. Why not OpenSolaris? Did not want to be beholden to Larry Ellison, and wanted ports.


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## sossego (Jun 16, 2010)

Was doing a search for operating systems and read a blurb.


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## da1 (Jun 16, 2010)

Using a computer since I was ~7-8y old (first pc was a 33MHz cpu with that lovely turbo buton -> going to 66MHz ...wohoooo ). Started off with win3.11 all the way to win7. Somewhere along the way of xp, I bought my first pentium4 and it came with REDHELL 7 or something like this (I dnt remember). Somehow I already knew some ppl using linux at that point and I got some magazines about linux (I successfully compiled&installed apache but had no clue how to start it lol). I jumped to Fedora 1,2,3,4,5,6 (I hated it - so many resources going to hell) then I tried Mandrake (and Mandriva too - I liked it - the internet was faster on linux than xp ). I used it around 6 months or something like that, then jumped to Slack (I was totally lost), Debian (couldn't get X to work properly - 640x480 bleah) and god knows what else. Ah, I remember Vector linux (very nice indeed - until u had to pay for it - mtfkrs ). All the forums I asked help fore were quite mean (for some reason).

After 2 days of work (straight work - no sleep) I managed to get a pppoe connexion working on Fedora (I think) and wrote a how to on a forum. Of course I was criticized. Then I got a pm from this guy who I never meat in my life. He called me at one point (or I called him?) and we talked for 4h or something like that over the phone and then he asked me to go talk some more over coffee. 4am and we were drinking coffee and telling stories of Linux, FreeBSD, his military days, chicks, and god knows what else. That was my first contact with FreeBSD. He got my attention and I made a picture of the OS as a good one.

So I tried it (9am - coffee finished - at home again - I cut school that day ). He gave me some pointers how to install it and I went on with it. I managed to delete everything (of course lol ) and after 2 tries I had it running (installed base+kernel). Ended up with a black screen and a prompter (half scared to death). Logden in.... "startx" -> "cmd not found". (hmmm ... wtf ?). "xdm" -> "cmd not found" (hmm ... ok), "kdm/gdm" -> "cmd not found" (wtf ????).

Reboot (wanted to go to windows).... but there was no windows left ("holly shit") <- this is when I realized what I've done (called the guy - reply: "this is how u'r gonna learn" - "jesus f# Christ" I said).


That's when I lost my virginity lol and I became a big boy. I still had the linux ideas "tell me this" and "tell me that". the guy showed me the handbook and it was the first one in my life that made sense and the first one speaking my language (I could understand it - and it was "WOW"). I read it, I did it - it worked.

Current status: learning FreeBSD since 6.2. Never stopes amazing me. You can just rely on it with no problems.

half a year ago a friend of mine wanted to switch to linux (a router machine). No way he wanted something else. So linux it is ...  Centos 5, REDHELL 5, Fedora 12 .... unstable, crashing or simply freezing (no idea why - maybe some "feature" lol). So we decided FreeBSD and guess what he is running for half a year already and I get congratulated for the system just about every time I talk to him (no downtime, no application crash, xfce4 running smooth - flash up - dhcp server running - ftp/www public server - 500+ daily IP's - gmirror, samba, nfs, virtualbox (for me), jails - CPU @ 80% all the time - absolutly no problems).


So I would like to say "Thank you FreeBSD and thank you guys" - rocksolid OS, hell-a-va cool guys, unbeatable docs, very impresive OS+ports, very good support (forums, mailing lists - usually I found out the answer before posting anything) and a very logical designe of everything. Thank's guys


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## jalla (Jun 16, 2010)

Now this goes back some time... I guess some forum members weren't even born when I had my first exposure to a unix-like FOSS with Minix around 1988.

Later I followed Bill Jolitz' article series in Dr.Dobbs Journal about the porting of BSD to x86 and downloaded 386BSD version 0.1alpha. (early '92 I believe). The whole system was on 11 floppies I think.
Making it run was not trivial as hardware support was a bit limited  Especially X11 was a lot of fun as you had to compute the modelines manually for your particular graphicscard/monitor combo.

As the 386bsd project slowly deteriorated, I went on with the 'patch-kit' and netbsd up until about 0.8, then finally FreeBSD 1.0 in december '93.

FreeBSD has been my preferred OS both for server and desktop usage ever since.


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## Alt (Jun 16, 2010)

Thanks great stories =)
That my story: i started my way with pc near 13years ago, using dos, then win95. Dreamed to be a programmer  Then i experimented with redhat, but got no luck with it - about 10 fails to install, about 5 system destroying (sometimes with windows too); i had no network at all so i did not understood anyting. Then i got job to fix lan network, got some experience with switches etc. Some day, tech director said to me: "Do you know freebsd?". I only know its unix haha)) Funny he was talking every time "linux is student's odd job". So, i becomed minor admin of this isp, working on some regular simple queries and tasks, then got full root; many times i got me vs server 1v1 fight  That was hard, but i got any experience on this (no servers have been maimed or destroyed haha). Then i was working to some other isps, then got job as a perl programmer. Now freelancing xD


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## sk8harddiefast (Jun 16, 2010)

> Eventually all roads lead to FreeBSD.


I agree with aragon 
XP->Gentoo->Freebsd
A big truth is that a lot of gentoo users became freebsd users.
I am one of them.
Also because i love Freebsd community and because Freebsd is that *exactly* i was looking for


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## graudeejs (Jun 16, 2010)

something like this
Win98 -> Win2000 -> WinMe -> WinXp -> Mandriva -> Gentoo -> FreeBSD -> Gentoo -> FreeBSD

first time I heard about FreeBSD was from Gentoo/FreeBSD project, I decided to try real thing... I love it


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## darkshadow (Jun 16, 2010)

*funny story*

a man who love linux ( linux zailot) introduce freebsd to me as opensource alternative to windows which I used to use as main os he didnt thout that I would adapt freebsd , nowdays I use freebsd and he hate me and we always fight  because he think that linux  is better


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## fronclynne (Jun 16, 2010)

DOS -> Windows 9x -> zipslack -> FreeBSD

The other option is that I was half-asleep trying to re-create "Warren Pease" (a la Pierre Menard), but my fingers were in the wrong place on the keyboard and I accidentally spontaneously recreated the FreeBSD bootloader & it all went from there.


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## vivek (Jun 16, 2010)

During dot com era lots of people wanted UNIX like os and freebsd was free. That is how it was started for me.
DOS -> Novell -> Solaris / HP-UX -> FreeBSD 

These days I spent time between FreeBSD, RHEL, and few Solaris database servers.


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## zspider (Jun 16, 2010)

I am new here. Just started using FreeBSD a couple of months ago. 

I came from Windows 95/DOS (486DX-II) > Windows 98 > Windows ME > Windows XP > Various Linux Distros > Arch Linux > FreeBSD

When I was taking SLED Linux course in college I kept getting bad marks because of the inconsistent way of doing things in Linux x( . I had also been using Arch Linux for a year on my desktop as well and it worked for the most part but like people here mentioned sometimes it would do weird things if it wasnt updated in 2-3 months. Also I often cringed when seeing all the dependencies it was pulling down during an update:\

So I wiped my laptop and put on FreeBSD 8. It took me a while to figure out what modules I needed to load but I got it. It works so well and so smoothly(Lenovo t61p). I would get rid of Arch Linux on my desktop if the Intel drivers for FreeBSD didn't have performance issues. Almost everything on my laptop works with FreeBSD and using anything else is agonizing now. I used to think compiling was asinine but its actually better than using binary packages.

Thank you for creating this fine operating system. I love it :e.


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## roddierod (Jun 16, 2010)

Radio Shack TRS80 CoCo -> TI 99 4/a -> DOS -> Win 3.1 -> Win 95 -> Win 98 -> Debian Linux -> FreeBSD 3.x

I started using Debian because Win 98 was killing the resources on my Pentium I (I forgot the speed) and I thought there has to be a free OS and the first thing I found when searching for it was Debian. Messed with it for 6 to 9 months and eventually started hating it because it was crashing too much like Win 98. Then one day I noticed the FreeBSD copyright was in a lot of the source code, so I downloaded it.


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## SirDice (Jun 16, 2010)

C64 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 4000 -> P-2 350MHz -> A lot more i386 crap

Intel assembly gives me the creeps, I seriously prefer 680x0. Never could get the hang of that little endian stuff, I still trip on it :e

Back in the old days I had heard about unix, and people were running it on the Amiga. This was NetBSD. Unfortunately I couldn't run it because my trusty old Amiga lacked an MMU. I could do a processor upgrade, move to a 68060 or even PPC, but it was way too expensive. So the idea got shelved. 

While I was working at a PC repairshop, I had my first encounters with internet. Customers would have a dialup account that didn't work for example. After a while we had internet at the shop and I loved it. I could play around with hardware all day while surfing the web. Remembered NetBSD and started digging around. Also found FreeBSD. As it turns out for running on an Amiga NetBSD would probably be best but FreeBSD rocked on i386. Ended up getting FreeBSD to run and even Xfree86 on some spare test stuff. X I think I compiled from source, can't remember ever finding packages or the ports for FreeBSD. Didn't really know what I was doing anyway, just following instructions I found on the net. But I left the shop for greener pastures and it all got shelved again.

At the insurance company I came in contact with other systems like SINIX/Reliant Unix (Siemens), HP-UX and AIX. They also had a big Siemens mainframe, now that's something else. Also lots of networking and obviously lots of Windows. At that time PC hardware was getting cheaper and cheaper. A guy at work told me he was running Linux instead of Windows and showed me a desktop with windowmaker. It peeked my interest as I could run that at home. So Slackware it was, I think 3 or 4. At first everything worked fine but soon found myself in dependency hell when trying to upgrade something.

While looking around the internet for something better I found FreeBSD again. All I had to do was download 2 floppy images, boot the machine with them and everything else would be downloaded. Cool. Found the ports system. Neat. It all just downloads everything, builds it from source, installs it, and it works. No fuss, no dependency hell. Never stopping half way during a big build because a certain library isn't installed. Got hooked. Tried Linux again a few times after that but they all got scrapped in favor of FreeBSD.

I did once try to download the CD 1 image on ISDN dialup. My internet access was unlimited but my phone bill wasn't. It would have taken all weekend (cheaper rates) and had started downloading on friday night. Everything seemed to work, crawling in at around 7KB/s. But when I checked on sunday afternoon the connection had dropped at around 80% done


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## vivek (Jun 16, 2010)

> checked on sunday afternoon the connection had dropped at around 80% done


wget has the -c option and it was added a long time ago; it saved my ass many times in the past ï¿½e


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## zeiz (Jun 17, 2010)

Was selling my multiboot laptop to Chinese guy. To cut negotiations I stated that tried on this laptop all the OSs existing!!! The guy asked: And FreeBSD? I never heard: It's like freeDOS? Yeah... a kind of a sort of... said the guy but something on his face told me more. Then I decided to try. God bless China


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## maujiq (Jun 17, 2010)

Apple -> dos -> xenix286 -> xenix386 -> 386bsd with patchkit -> FreeBSD 1.0, FreeBSD 2.2.8, FreeBSD 4.6, FreeBSD 6.5, FreeBSD 8.0.

In parallel I sometimes need to use XP.


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## Beastie (Jun 17, 2010)

vivek said:
			
		

> wget has the -c option and it was added a long time ago


What's wrong with [cmd=]fetch -Fr <url>[/cmd] (or R instead of F)?


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## oliverh (Jun 17, 2010)

at home: Apple -> ZX81 -> C64 -> Amstrad CPC 6128 -> Amiga 1000/500/2000 (later some NetBSD 1.x for 68k)-> Apple Quadra AV/something i386 with Windows 3.x -> something Pentium with Windows 3.x and lots of PC hardware with WinNT 4.0, W2k, early Slackware/Debian, since about 5-6 years FreeBSD/OpenBSD, Slackware since the beginning 

school/university/job: original IBM PC (DOS) -> Siemens Sinix (a UNIX in the 80s) -> SGI Irix (early 90s) -> Mac OS X on PowerPC and Intel hardware.


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## gcnhn (Jun 17, 2010)

I heard about ubuntu first in November last year and used it for a period. 

Then I google linux and unix and find that FreeBSD is an open source unix system, hmmmm, I think it is the most stable OS that can be freely accessed to me in the world.


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## vivek (Jun 17, 2010)

Beastie said:
			
		

> What's wrong with [cmd=]fetch -Fr <url>[/cmd] (or R instead of F)?



Nothing I just like wget and wput more


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## Uniballer (Jun 18, 2010)

It's not an ideal world.  The purpose, budget, and available hardware and software dictate the hardware platform(s) and operating system(s).  FreeBSD suits me just fine at the moment.

In no particular order and certainly incomplete:

IBM 370 series
PDP-8 OS/8
DECsystem-10 TOPS-10
PDP-11 RSTS/E RSX-11M/M+ RT-11
TI 990/12 DX10
Data General MV8000 AOS/VS
VAX/VMS
Apple Mac OS
MS-DOS
Microsoft Windows (3.0 and up)
Alpha/OpenVMS
SCO Unix
386BSD
Linux
NetBSD
FreeBSD


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## bojan (Jul 3, 2010)

My order:

C64
MSDOS
windows 3.1
windows 95
windows 98
Windows 98 / caldera open linux 1.2
Windows 98 / red-hat linux 5.0
--Checking local computer store for Linux I saw FreeBSD 2.2.6, the guy told me it's not Linux but similar, but I didn't want it --BIG Mistake..
windows 98 / Mandrake Linux 6.0
Windows 2000/ Mandrake Linux 7.0
Downloaded FreeBSD 4.0 was lazy to install it also read to wait for point realese..
Windows XP / Mandrake 8

Christmas holiday 2001 FreeBSD 4.4 installed on the dedicated machine as my router/server..
never looked back..

My server is FreeBSD my laptop is FreeBSD, second machine FreeBSD/ Windows XP

At work I admin CentOS and Windows servers, but I sneaked one production FreeBSD server doing FAMP/FTP, had other one but died . Tough to convince management to have more FreeBSDs.


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## fwaggle (Jul 3, 2010)

A friend attending a university gave me an _old_ Slackware Linux CD, and I liked it. Then when I got access to internet, a friend let me borrow his shell on the UK User Group's "dogma" machine, and I fell in love with how organized everything was.


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## itsbrad212 (Jul 3, 2010)

Desktop: Slackware -> Gentoo -> Arch -> OpenBSD -> FreeBSD
Laptop: Ubuntu -> Fedora -> Slackware -> FreeBSD -> Gentoo -> Arch (majority of time)

I love Arch too much at the moment  I won't be changing either for a _long_ time.


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## Dereckson (Jul 4, 2010)

Short paths:
(server) FreeBSD -> FreeBSD and some Linuxes -> FreeBSD

(desktop) DOS -> DOS + Windows 3.11 -> Windows 95 -> NT4 -> NT4 and Mac OS 7.5.3 -> NT4 and Mac OS 8 -> Windows 2000, Mac OS -> Windows 2003 -> Windows Vista + FreeBSD in VMware -> Windows 7 + FreeBSD in VMware 

Long answer:

In 2001, we made the project to buy a dedicated server on my IRC channel.

We picked FreeBSD as operating system for a web/irc/mail server.

I don't remember the crucial factor but here some points leading to our decision:
(1) One of our users wanted to install gnuworld (it's the channel management service on Undernet, X) and at this time  the howto were optimized for FreeBSD.

(2) Our sysadmin had a preference for FreeBSD (but I think we found it after the FreeBSD choice).

(3) This channel were a Windows support channel and we were tired of linux kiddies flooding our channel saying linux rulez, Bill gates is evil, Windows  go to hell.

(4) FreeBSD had an excellent reputation on the Undernet IRC network, more than an half of the servers used on FreeBSD.

(5) They were some echo than FreeBSD were more stable than Linux.

(6) We were young males, teenagers or young adults. Beastie seemed more cool, virile and powerful than a pinguin.

Some months later, we needed more capacity and took a second server on Debian.

Meanwhile, our sysadmin resigned and if we had another sysadmin for the Debian box, I were the main sysadmin on the FreeBSD one. I so were able to compare Linux and FreeBSD and prefered a lot the FreeBSD one.

Probably the sockstat killer command and the port system.

Nowadays, I always use FreeBSD as server  for 10 years.

For 4 years, I use also it as desktop coenvironment: my laptops are Windows + FreeBSD inside VMware. I'm happy to be able to get the advantages of the two worlds (ability to run demos - as demoscene releases - and apps like Photoshop, Excel or Visual Studio on Windows, to have a nice cli and Gnome to edit my web projects with a dev environment similar to the prod one FreeBSD side).


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## dralex999 (Jul 4, 2010)

I learned Unix in college and really liked it. When I had the money, time and hardware I made the switch to FreeBSD and haven't looked back.


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## nestux (Jul 5, 2010)

Well, i'm a Linux Users since 2000 but now im traying FreeBSD and I love it. I have been using FreeBSD for 3 weeks now and everyday I learn something new about this fantastic system.

I still use Linux but after this weeks i have to say: FreeBSD really rocks!!! ]=)


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## Jamz (Jul 8, 2010)

I was doing IT work experience at a company when I was 14? and saw one of the Tech Support guys running FreeBSD on a PC. At the time I had only really seen DOS and Windows (3.1/95) so I was quite interested but never done anything about it.

I left school in '98 and went to back to work there for a couple of months which is when the same guy gave me a couple of FreeBSD 3.3 CDs (iirc). I took them home and proceeded to accidently wipe my Windows 95/98 PC trying to partition the disk, needless to say I lost all my data and wasn't very happy. x( That attempt at FreeBSD ended there.

I left after a few months and went to do a desktop support job for a couple of years when out of the blue the same guy called me up asking if I wanted a job as a junior Tech Support person. I jumped at the chance and went back to work there with him and another "Linux" guy.
The servers there were a mix of Linux (SUSE) / FreeBSD4 and Windows NT4/2000 and I was going to be looking after them.
I obviously didn't have much *nix experience so they suggested I built myself another PC to help me learn. They both then argued for a while as to the best OS for me install, SUSE or FreeBSD. I went for SUSE initally but the kernel kept core dumping so I rebuilt it (with guidance!) with FreeBSD 4 which was fine (It turned out I had a memory fault but FreeBSD didn't seem to care so much). The FreeBSD guy also taught me 'vi' for which I am eternally grateful (Cheers Eddy ).

That was all ~10 years ago and I've been using it ever since!

James


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## Chuchubi (Jul 13, 2010)

Atari -> Atari MiNT -> RedHat Linux -> FreeBSD -> OpenBSD -> NetBSD. Today I use FreeBSD and Linux Fedora and I like porting linux software to FreeBSD.


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## Caliante (Sep 1, 2010)

XT, AT286, 386SX16, 386SX33, 386DX40 (wow, AMD, wow, this is fast, and I have 4 MB of RAM, wow, girls, do you see me? ), 486SX, 486DX, forgot about what next because it was all called Pentium then. Dos 3.x (remember Wordperfect 5.0 :stud), Windows 2.x (lesson learned: stick with Dos and Wordperfect), Windows 3.0, WfW 3.10 & 3.11 (if I am correct), Win95, Win98SE, Win2000 (skipped NT4, never got it to install on my box), WinXP. In between a zillion attempts to install some Linux distro but managed to crash all of them within 1 hour after install. Then DesktopBSD (love and respect the initiative), also installed PC-BSD (didn't work), and finally FreeBSD in dual boot with XP until I have found suitable replacements for all the apps I use under XP, so I can delete that of my comp and use FreeBSD full time.


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## RoboNuggie (Sep 1, 2010)

Dragon 32 -> Spectrum 128+2 -> Sinclair QL -> Amiga 600 -> Amiga 1200 -> Win 3.11 -> 98 -> Red Hat -> Debian -> Ubuntu -> FreeBSD exclusively on homebuilt  systems.

Nothing remarkable really, but I think Ubuntu killed off the notion of Linux for me for the time being...... FreeBSD 'feels' right at the moment, but as in all things, it's a case of whatever floats your boat.


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## Zhwazi (Sep 4, 2010)

Windows XP -> Ubuntu -> Crap -> Crap -> Crap -> Gentoo (woot) -> Opensolaris && OS X -> FreeBSD

During the period of Crap -> Crap -> Crap I tried a wide variety of distros, from Ubuntu Distros to plain Debian, Slax to Slackware proper, Fedora and openSuse, vector, Sabayon, then from Sab I went to Gentoo. I was also a multibooting fiend at the time, having a desktop with three hard drives and 13 operating systems including most of those listed above, HURD, OpenBSD, Minix, XP, and Vista (this was before W7).

Eventually I stuck with Opensolaris on the desktop and OS X on a Macbook I bought. Then when signs started looking bad for Opensolaris I found FreeBSD to offer what I needed. Only then I came to appreciate FreeBSD for itself and not for being a second-best-after-Opensolaris.


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## bleepbloop (Sep 11, 2010)

desktop: mac os 9 -> mac os 10 -> ubuntu -> debian -> freebsd
:-D


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## psycho (Sep 11, 2010)

I was using Win XP, long time ago, and at that point i thought there are only Windows operating systems ( :shamed :r ) . 
Then I heard of friend of mine for Ubuntu and I was like "WOW, that exists?". I was thrilled.
I thought that was it. And then I registered to one cool forum, where you could see under someones profile , which OS is he using. 
And at one cool guy, I saw Free BSD. 
Huh, i was wandering what is this?
Then I started googling, and step by step, discovering this amazing world.I installed it and never came back.
That is my story.


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## Anonymous (Sep 12, 2010)

Dad works for google, gave me a thinkpad w/ broken windows installation, a freebsd unleashed book and freebsd5 cds told me to learn it and then sent me to school for a CIS degree. 2 1/2 years later here I am. As far as whoever says windows is a bloated operating system though, what the hell, do you know about technology? do you realize you can get a desktop system with an 8 core 64 bit processor, 10 gigs of ram and a terabyte + gigabit nic for less than $2000? who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant


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## hedgehog (Sep 12, 2010)

my boss has been using freebsd so I wanted to see how does it look like on the desktop. unfortunately, during installation I had screwed up with bootmanager and therefore windows refused to boot. without knowledge on how to fix it I had no other choice than compiling X and KDE (till that time I've heard only about KDE and Gnome, but KDE required less dependencies to build)
half-year have passed and I still don't want to restore Windows because I don't need it anymore


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## kpedersen (Sep 12, 2010)

mharvey87 said:
			
		

> who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant



With a system like that, even a bloated operating system will run fast... However, something like FreeBSD with openbox will still run faster. I like faster.


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## UNIXgod (Sep 12, 2010)

mharvey87 said:
			
		

> Dad works for google, gave me a thinkpad w/ broken windows installation, a freebsd unleashed book and freebsd5 cds told me to learn it and then sent me to school for a CIS degree. 2 1/2 years later here I am. As far as whoever says windows is a bloated operating system though, what the hell, do you know about technology? do you realize you can get a desktop system with an 8 core 64 bit processor, 10 gigs of ram and a terabyte + gigabit nic for less than $2000? who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant



Your obviously not a programmer.


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## bleepbloop (Sep 13, 2010)

mharvey87 said:
			
		

> As far as whoever says windows is a bloated operating system though, what the hell, do you know about technology? do you realize you can get a desktop system with an 8 core 64 bit processor, 10 gigs of ram and a terabyte + gigabit nic for less than $2000? who care's about bloat, it's irrelevant



That sort of setup is still going to be way out of the price range for a lot of people.  Plus, why even worry about bloat when you can use a system that doesn't have bloat in the first place ( not to mention the proprietary nature of the systems )?


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## nackpere (Nov 23, 2010)

I first noticed FreeBSD when I saw the slides for FreeBSD 7 and how well it scaled with the ULE scheduler compared to Linux (on Slashdot or something).  After some reading on the internet and a fine article on the differences between Linux and FreeBSD (http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01), I ditched Linux as my hobby OS for FreeBSD.  Although I'm forced to use Windows at work, here is the transition in my personal OS:

Windows 3.1 --> Windows 98 --> Windows XP --> Mandriva/SuSE --> Ubuntu --> Fedora --> FreeBSD


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## Pushrod (Nov 23, 2010)

In the spring of 2000, I started dabbling with BigSlack on my Windows 98 install. I liked it, and setup a dual boot arrangement. I had a lot of trouble matching any documentation to my installation, so I then tried more popular distros, and hated each one for various reasons.

Right around the time I was tiring of fiddling with distros and all that, someone on a chat room suggested FreeBSD. That was around November of 2000, which means that it was almost precisely a decade ago. 4.2-RELEASE had just come out at the time.


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## vinhsynd (Dec 6, 2010)

windows growing at home 3.1 - 95. didn't have any money in college, but I had friends who were ee majors. they would let me into their computer lab which was all BSD, to do my biology papers with latex. once i had money to buy computer parts for myself, I just kept using bsd.


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## vigolcom (Dec 25, 2010)

Some needs:
* Web Developing on the stable surface (HTTPD/PGSQL/Perl/PHP) - *WAMP* are not practical for designing real systems!
* Tracing Kernel Codes - I like it.
* BSD Licence
* Port Collection
* Centralized Community

Linux community just reinvent the wheel for many years, So I love FreeBSD.


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## demirpla (Dec 27, 2010)

Here is my line OS evolution:

Commodore 64 (1988-1993) -> DOS (1993-1995) -> Windows95 (1995-1996) -> Solaris (1996-1999) -> Red Hat (1999-2003) -> Debian (2003-2010) -> freeBSD (just for the last two days)


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## nakal (Dec 27, 2010)

*Commodore 64 -> MS-DOS 6.x -> MS-Windows 3.x -> MS-Windows 9x -> SuSE Linux -> Debian Linux -> FreeBSD 4.3 ... FreeBSD 5.1 -> Gentoo Linux -> FreeBSD 5.3 ... FreeBSD 6.x -> Gentoo Linux -> FreeBSD 7.0 ... FreeBSD 8.1 (now)*

As you see, I tried Linux a few times... but it's so annoying not to have a reasonable ports collection and a working update system... I always ended up using FreeBSD.

As you see, I skipped 5.2 ... this was the worst nightmare of all FreeBSDs for me.

I also changed to FreeBSD for the first time because I noticed two things:

FreeBSD ports collection has always fresh software (Debian lagged terribly).
I noticed someone ported a piece of software written by me. I wanted to help taking care of it.


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## madonal (Dec 29, 2010)

As it might happen to a lot of people here, I came by via accident / Google help or leading me to this site. After reading a couple of posts and articles I finally decided to subscribe/ register myself and well there I go and here I am


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## UNIXgod (Dec 29, 2010)

madonal said:
			
		

> As it might happen to a lot of people here, I came by via accident / Google help or leading me to this site. After reading a couple of posts and articles I finally decided to subscribe/ register myself and well there I go and here I am



google leads people to bsd?

http://www.google.com/bsd


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## sk8harddiefast (Dec 29, 2010)

On Linux too 
http://www.google.com/linux


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## tedbell (Dec 25, 2018)

Atari XEGS->Apple IIGS->A bunch of MACS and the occasional Apple IIe->DOS 3.3->DOS 6.2->Windows 95,98,200,XP->Ubuntu 7 (for about 45 minutes)->Windows XP->Kubuntu->Mandriva (my favourite Linux)->Linux Mint (for about 48 hours)->Crunchbang Linux->Arch Linux->FreeBSD 11.2


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## k.jacker (Dec 25, 2018)

My way was simple.
C64 -> FreeBSD

I hated DOS/Windows and refused to use it for years. When I became friend with an older student, I learned about FreeBSD from him and another student got me a used PC. Installed FreeBSD 4.3 and never looked into a anything else.


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## rsronin (Dec 25, 2018)

tedbell said:


> Atari XEGS->Apple IIGS->A bunch of MACS and the occasional Apple IIe->DOS 3.3->DOS 6.2->Windows 95,98,200,XP->Ubuntu 7 (for about 45 minutes)->Windows XP->Kubuntu->Mandriva (my favourite Linux)->Linux Mint (for about 48 hours)->Crunchbang Linux->Arch Linux->FreeBSD 11.2




Not same path, but similar experience with earlier ubuntu version and linux mint never survived the 48 hours too here ;-)


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 26, 2018)

There's already a silly thread for this. It replaces the previous silly thread that "accidentally" got deleted a while back. I love accidental deletions.


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## Ogis (Dec 27, 2018)

I've been using the Debian system for eight years. After the eighth version of "Jessie" and this transition to the systemd, I broke my teeth, but I started to look at FreeBSD. After Debian's ninth version, called "Stretch", I could no longer suffer the unpredictable systemd "elegance", its constant predictions, similar to the wait for shutdown-service to complete (who faces this problem will understand me). But when Web Outside of Browsers (Weboob) was removed from the official repository because it was done by a group called "Debian Anti-harassment team", my patience was exhausted and Debian was removed from my computer's hard drive without any regret and has been replaced by FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE. After the new year I plan to transfer another machine to FreeBSD.


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## RoboNuggie (Dec 28, 2018)

Binatone console >> Atari 2600 >> Dragon 32 >> ZX Spectrum >> Sinclair QL >> Amiga 600 >> Amiga 1200 >> Windows 3.11 >> OS/2 -3 & 4 >> Windows 95 >> Windows 98 >> Windows 2000 >> Linux (Redhat, turbo, Early Ubuntu, Debian)>> FreeBSD 10+ Years Exclusively.

Nothing special....


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## Sensucht94 (Dec 28, 2018)

PC-DOS 6.0 + Windows 3.1 >> OS/2 Warp 4 >> Windows Me >> Windows XP (+ a bit of IRIX 6.5) >> OpenSolaris (2008.5 - 2009.11)  >> FreeBSD 9.2 >> NetBSD 6.1.5 + macOS (Mavericks - Yosemite ) >> 
FreeBSD 11.0 (and following) + NetBSD (7.0 and following) + Illumos (OI - Hipster, Tribblix, OmniOSce)


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## fernandel (Dec 28, 2018)

ZX Spectrum >> ATARI 800-XL >> IBM XT >> DOS  >> OS/2 >> OS/2 Warp >> Debian * Slackware >> OS X Mountain Lion + FreeBSD  7.0 and following >> FreeBSD 12.0


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## runix (Dec 28, 2018)

SGI-IRIX(as system admin) --> Fedora(Workstation) --> CentOS(laptop) --> MacOSX (Workstation) --> Debian (laptop) --> FreeBSD 11.2 --> FreeBSD 12.0 (From today )


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## Emrion (Dec 28, 2018)

I could say I begun by the Ti-57, then Sharp PC-1251 and Canon X-07... But it's not really interesting, if you ask me.
After that, I used Windows and still use it as main OS.

Nevertheless, there is a fact: I left linux and I think I'll never come to this OS again. Not because it's bad (I think just the opposite), but one day, back in time, I discovered PC-BSD and I felt in love. When time has come to change for TrueOS or Ghost BSD, I was very disappointed for plenty things.

Then, I came to the source: FreeBSD. It's very amusing to learn how it works, it recalls me the first linux times (slackware was just amazing). Since, I discarded all FreeBSD based distributions.


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