freeBSD and Linux and windows... how? - Antionline Forums

rider_royal · June 29th, 2005, 02:10 PM

Hi all,
I am faced with dilemma and googling since morning but can't decide , so putting my question here.
I have got all new 120 GB hard disk, and after loading windows XP, i am left with 50 GB free space.
Now i have latest version of freeBSD( never used free BSD before) and linux( both mandrake and Suse). now i want to learn more about ( to increase my knowledge) OS and network security and so on. So can't decide that do i install both of them, and if i do , how to use this existing space in best way?

now 2nd question:
I have single PC, this one, no current access to any network for lab practice, so how do I improve my skills about various tools and commands and other things considering I have DSL broadband connection? any suggestion.

This question is little debateful if i think right:

Out of freeBSD and Linux(any popular flavour) which one is best for learning purposes and then user purposes, as i found this on internet:

http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/bsd_flier.html

*SirDice* · June 29th, 2005, 02:41 PM

I used to run windows and linux... Then I started using FreeBSD.. When I got used to FreeBSD I ditched linux.. The ports system on FreeBSD rocks! Want to install apache? Just cd /usr/ports/www/apache and issue make all install.. Everything you need will get fetched and build..

Fbsd and linux both have the same look and feel eventhough they're different "under the hood"... You can run most (if not all) applications available for Linux on FreeBSD (natively).. You can even run linux binaries on FreeBSD..

One side note though.. AFAIK Nvidia are the only ones that support FreeBSD.. So if you want hardware accelerated 3D in Xorg/XFree86 you're stuck with NVidia..

If it was me I'd stick with windows and FreeBSD..

Some pointers you might need:

FreeBSD Handbook
Freshports Everything you wanted to know about the ports that are available..

rowdy_yates · June 29th, 2005, 02:47 PM

when working on a windows box for testing - i just run them all in vmware. you just need the disk space & mem capacity. the benefit is you can save snapshots and totally nuke the VM OS and return to normal in under 1 minute.

as far as learning - i personally prefer FreeBSD.

alamuru420123 · June 29th, 2005, 03:29 PM

IMO, I don't think it's such a good idea to install both. If your planning on learning them, wouldn't it be better if you install one of them, learn all you can about it (atleast until you get fed up with it) and then shift over to the other OS. I mean ... between linux and FBSD, not windows. If your just starting out, you'll need windows.

rider_royal · June 29th, 2005, 04:47 PM

thanks all for support, so its decided I am going to install freeBSD, and as i have nvidia card so that won't be problem.

Have a question though, i have DSl broadband but my ISP supplied me with USB based ZyXel Prestige 630 modem , which don't have drivers for linux. i had found drivers for it on sourceforge.net,( still use them), but don't know if they will work on freeBSD. Any ideas how to make it work? It uses PPoE.

Once again thanks for support. :-)

PacketThirst · June 29th, 2005, 06:16 PM

My suggestion is to install Windows/Linux and then get Vmware installed. You can install FreeBsd or
any other Os as a client Os using Vmware. Most people talk about buying pcs and creating a LAN
to learn about network security. Vmware allows you to create virtual networks with the various
client Os's . Currently i have a network consisting of two virtual boxes running FreeBsd and Whoppix and the host box running Xp.

www.vmware.com

rider_royal · June 29th, 2005, 06:32 PM

For those who use vmware, does this software can (nearly) completely imitate a real lab if I install 2 or 3 different OS on it ? For if it can than i can have real benefit of lab enviroment to practice network skills.

PacketThirst · June 29th, 2005, 06:56 PM

Yeah dude ! .... Thats what i was talking about. You can run lots of virtual boxes at a time.
The number of virtual boxes will ofcourse will depend on the power of the host box. And
they COMPLETELY respond as if they were in a real network

cashmoney · June 29th, 2005, 08:25 PM

pack as much memory as you can in the box. VMWare uses 256M per OS. A good rule of thumb is 256 x each OS + the host OS.

Clp727 · June 29th, 2005, 10:48 PM

I am running my "Nix" machines within MS Virtual Machine. MS Virtual Machine assignes each VM 128MB of RAM. It can be adjusted, but as mentioned earlier, you need as much RAM as you can stuff into your real box. You can send and recieve data from the real (Host) machine and the virtual machines. I have found that your software firewall will treat the virtual machines as if they are real attackers. I am sure you would have the same results with VMWare. I would suggest a minimum of 512 MB and atleast a 2 GB proc. I'm proud of my machines.

I will attach a .jpg image of the console.