FreeBSD: Try it out?


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So I got this old Dell Dimension XPS300 with 128mb of Ram, 15gb HD, PII400 and a Rage crap card. It was my sister's old system, but I took it after I built her a new one.

I've always been intrigued with FreeBSD. I've wanted to try it for the longest time, but until recently I only had one computer so I didnt want to dualboot BSD. I've used Linux a few times before, starting way back in Redhat 5.1, and I had RH9 a few months ago, but kinda got bored with it after a while.

So now I have a spare computer sitting in my closet and I'd like to put it to use. Mainly I'd like to set it up as a simple Apache/mySQL/PHP server so I can have a localhost webserver to test my scripts/web stuff etc. I wont serve any pages outside the LAN. I already have a firewall so using BSD as a firewall doesnt interest me (for now). Since I have another 30gb spare HD, I could throw it in there and use the box as a backup fileserver while I'm at it just in case, via Samba. I've got enough NICs as well.

I dont plan on using BSD as a desktop, just server, so I doubt I'll even install X. I'll use webadmin and SSH to administer it.

Now that I have that out of the way, what am I looking at? I realize FreeBSD may not be as newbie friendly as Redhat 9, but I dont care as I'm willing to learn. For example, the latest release is 5.2.1. Do I go with that, or an older version from the STABLE releases? How easy is compiling? I've searched a bit and it seems FreeBSD seems rather easy to compile a new kernel etc? Also how is upgrading? Is upgrading really involved or a snap?

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I have heard that, in many ways, *BSDs are very similar to Linux. If you can compile a kernel on one, you are pretty much set. Some directory and command differences, but that's it.

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