No, this isn't about a country & western song. Just a "theme".

The theme is based upon a FREEbie. I love freebies. What about you? It's exciting when you get a really good one. Ah, time to start on the nuts and bolts.

My main computer's hard drive is acting iffy. So wanted a backup-plan. Since I don't own a copy of Windows XP, have to figure out what to do in the case of it going bad (since the external hard drive is too full to do a complete backup).

Was looking to go with another FreeBSD install. Used the 6.1 release with mostly success, but 6-7 months to get audio working and never got the video. Noticed they have a front-end installer (version?) called PC-BSD. It's FreeBSD with a graphical user interface (GUI) which keeps it clean and simple. And I do mean pretty simple.

You'll need to burn CD's from image files (.iso format). So you'll need Nero, CDBurnerXP or some other candidate. The guide covering PC-BSD will actually give you links to freebies for that. Then you simply slide the first one into your ATAPI-compatable CD drive and boot up with it as the first device. From there, it gives all the gobblydegook which is normally associated with it. Don't panic. Even if it splashes warnings, errors and whatever else looks bad. It will bring up a GUI for you to begin. Or should.

When you get to that point, you get to enter basic information. You get to agree to a EULA first. Then choose type of keyboard and your time-zone. YOU should choose a "client" install, when it gives you an option out of two others. I just picked everything on the left. It then wants to know what hard drive to use. So you'll have to pick one if you have multiples installed. Or the default offering if only one and for the SWAP drive. Next it will ask you to add users. Primarily, the root user, but then you'll need at least one other user to run the OS GUI of KDE. KDE is a desktop manager (like Windows). It's been around quite a while and works pretty darn well. You'll also be asked what kind of components to add. These are "ports", the applications you would normally install by doing a make install clean if you already installed the ports tree (i.e. having a Makefile in that directory). It takes a while to install this, so go for coffee and a cigarette. It'll ask for the second disc, then maybe the third.

First boot-up after install, you'll be asked to set your preferred resolution and video driver. Except it won't be the typical MS Windows option list. It'll be listed like "mga", "s3", "vesa", etc. If you aren't sure, chose the latter. If you are technically-wise on your graphics driver, you'll probably know the correct answer. It will do a test to see if your video preferences will work. If so, it'll ask if you want to keep them. If it doesn't work, it won't ask. It'll throw you back to the original settings it offered. You can always change it later, so don't spend hours on worrying over this.

The boot-up menu will include about 8-9 choices. Let it default to the first. If you have a problem with that, try #7 and go through the "Display Wizard Setup". If that one doesn't, then tell it to use VESA mode. Most all video cards of recent make will support this and make your life easier at this moment. It will finish loading up all the things which are normally hidden by Microsoft in the greeting screens of Windows. It will eventually get to a login prompt. Don't do anything, because it is automatically loading KDE.

When the X-windows background service gets it to running, it will look like clean and normal graphics (if everything went well up to this point). It will show a few icons in the center of the screen. Then it has a translucent Desktop Folder with your installed components. THe bottom left is a globe with a flame which is your start menu. Next to that is something that tells you when you've got new devices connected to your computer (i.e. USB drives). In the bottom right hand corner is your component manager. You can use it to update existing installs or to add more. And it has an easy list for your to choose from there. If you want additional offerings, they have a link to the PBI's (which is like the .msi files in Winderws). This should have you off and running!

Suggested PBI's/Components:
Firefox or Opera (browser, flash supported)
Pidgin (multi-IM service chat client)
Open Office (office suite, MS office compat.)
K3B (CD-burning app)

There is already an audio and two video players included with KDE. And if you want to use regular FreeBSD ports, you can install the ports tree and do the good ol' make install clean as root in a Terminal window.

If you are running 1Gb or RAM or more, that swap/paging "drive" will rarely be used. And I'd loaded an app (port) called AVIDEMUX, used it to delete a few frames from an .avi video to save on CD. It recognizes the USB drives and CD's that are inserted with no trouble. The only real issue I'd had so far is trying to use my digital camera (with "DigiKam" PBI) and it doesn't recognize it. Maybe because My Kodak C813 doesn't support RAW format?

Otherwise everything else I'd set out to run has worked. Even runs a few Windows-based programs using WINE. :)