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Time for mounting. I created my directories in /mnt and added the disks in /etc/fstab. All the partitions that needed mounting were FAT32. Works perfectly.

I started with the GUI. KDE/Gnome/Explorer has never been a choice of mine, I've been using Litestep since my 386. Not surprisingly, I installed the WindowManager fluxbox. X got installed without problems as a dependency. Then I used xf86cfg to set up input devices and graphic card. Afterwards I opened XF86Config and changed some Hz details, and also enabled mouse scrolling by adding Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" in the input device section. TrueType fonts are mandatory, so xfstt got installed pretty fast. I copied my fonts from my font directory from my FAT32 partition into my new TrueType folder, and added FontPath "unix/:7101" in XF86Config.

All the packages/portsdescribed underneath got installed without any trouble. Ditto with dependencies.

Internet
- A graphical browser is a must-have, so I installed Opera 6.11 and Phoenix 0.5. I copied my Opera bookmarks from my Windows partition, edited the look and layout in Prefences, and I was set to go.
- I do not need a fancy mail client like Outlook or Evolution, so I installed Sylpheed. It supports unlimited mail accounts, and also majordomo mailinglists. And it's fast.
- I'm on IRC at a daily basis, and KVirc is a full featured client that fits my needs.
- Friends use MSN, so I had to be on that network too. Gaim 0.60 was not yet ported when I installed FBSD 5.0, so I used aMSN until Gaim 0.60 got up and running.
- I also needed an FTP client, and gFTP did the trick.

Multimedia
- It should be no surprise that I installed XMMS as my audio player. I copied my favorite skin from my WinAmp 2.x folder and loaded up a playlist from my record collection.
As video player I installed MPlayer. It supports all of the formats I need, like mov, mpeg and avi.
- To get sound to work I needed to recompile the kernel after adding "device pcm" in the kernel configuration. No sweat.

Misc
- OpenOffice.org 1.0 got installed through pkg_add, it would have taken days to compile that one. It works fine.
- I needed an archive manager with a GUI. I browsed FreshMeat and stopped my quest on File Roller.

Conclusion:

Everything is fast and stable, minus File Roller, which has a habit of crashing. I haven't missed my old OS at all.

Likes:
- Stability and speed
- A lot of applications to choose from the stable and fast growing package system.
- Very good documentation at freebsd.org (Handbook) Although I haven't used it during this install and configuration of FreeBSD, it still remains one of the best documentation out there.
- There's not a thousand distributions of FreeBSD, that way it's much easier to solve problems by a little search on the WWW or in the handbook. You don't have to search Google to find a solution compatible with your distro, as you would in Linux
- Thin /root folder ;)

Dislikes:
- Winex is not yet ported. That one is a big drawback for many gamers.
- Nothing yet. Some might say that a dislike can be that FreeBSD doesn't have a default full featured GUI set up like many Linux distributions. But FreeBSDs goal has never been to advance in the desktop war. I like it just the way it is.

Do you want to use FreeBSD, but you're not sure about the applications to use?

Install some of the mainstream distros and write down which applications in the different categories you like. When you think you've got it all, check if they've been ported to FreeBSD. Most likely they're all there.

What are you waiting for?

About the Author:
Carl G. Mathisen is 20 years old, lives in Norway, studies Information Systems and works as a system developer.

1. "FreeBSD Intro, Part I"
2. "FreeBSD Intro, Part II"