[PLUG] Greetings, and a question...

[david]

On Sat, 9 Nov 2002 16:23:38 -0800
"tranceboy" <tranceboy at tranceboy.com> wrote:

> I'm new to the list, I've been developing an interest in *nix recently and I
> picked up a copy of Computer Bits and saw that the local groups included a
> Linux user's group.
> 
> I'm getting ready to install FreeBSD on a 20 GB partition (I'm going to dual
> boot for a bit and see how I like it before I dump a bunch of money on a new
> system).  I'm not expecting this to be a multi-user machine at any point.  I
> primarily use my computer for watching movies, listening to music, web
> browsing, newsgroups, e-mail, web design, and games (thus the dual booting).
> 
> What I'm looking for in terms of advice :
> 
> 1 ) I've read a little bit about the partitioning process, but I'm really
> not sure what the best way to go about things is.  Should I just cram
> everything into one / partition, or should I break it up into a few, and if
> so, does anyone have some good advice on how to partition?
> 

I always split the disk slice up. The FreBSD installer can divide the slice up automatically but you can customize your setup if you do it manually. Optimists may say that modern filesystems and disks are so reliable you should put everything in 1 partition; however, pessimists never put all of their eggs in 1 basket.

/	128MB is all you need
swap	2x-2.5x your RAM is a good rule of thumb.
/tmp	Depends, but on a 20GB slice I'd probably allocate 1GB.
/var	Depends. On a play/workstation 1 or 2 GB. On a mail or database server much larger.
/usr	Most of the rest of the slice.
/home	what you haven't already allocated elswhere.	   


> 3 ) I've got a 60 GB FAT32 partition on the same drive which is pretty
> exclusively for video/audio storage.  Everything I've read indicates that
> there shouldn't be any problems accessing this - is there anything special
> I'll need to do to make it available?

You'll need to edit /etc/fstab. Something like this:
# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/ad0s1	        /win            ntfs    ro              0       0
You'll have to customize it to suit your system. I'd copy /etc/fstab to /etc/fstab.bak before making any changes, just in case.

> 4 ) Can anyone recommend a good media player which will handle
> MPG/VOB/DivX/AVI?
>
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2002/10/17/FreeBSD_Basics.html
She's awesome.

If you going to dual boot I recommend grub. Figuring it out the first time can be a little hairy but once mastered it makes swapping operating systems much easier.

If you've got an Nvidia based graphics card, you're in luck. Nvidia just released binary drivers for FreeBSD. Now you can play Bzflag at >2fps.