Welcome to /fBSDt/! All users are welcome, including beginne

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Welcome to /fBSDt/! All users are welcome, including beginners. Please be civil, this is a "Friendly" thread.

>why should I try a BSD?
They're open source, Unix-like, they offer great features, stability, security and versatility to all your needs. They are well-documented and sport ample hardware support.

>where should I start?
Check the resources below. PC-BSD, GhostBSD and MidnightBSD are easy-to-install, user-friendly desktop-oriented distributions of FreeBSD that can get you started. Install on VirtualBox first just to try it out.

Seasoned Unix users, why not get a free OpenBSD remote shell to play with at devio.us? Try pfSense, m0n0wall or OPNsense on your firewall, experiment with NetBSD on your embedded device, or create your own network storage server with FreeNAS!

>w-what's the difference between all those something-BSDs?
After version 4.4, the BSD operating system was forked into many different distributions with different focuses. FreeBSD aims to be fully-featured, NetBSD focuses on portability (it runs even on toasters!), OpenBSD on security and correctness, DragonFly BSD implements cutting-edge filesystem and SMP technology. And then there are specific subdistributions of the aforementioned, like for example PC-BSD, which is a desktop-focused distribution of FreeBSD.

==Resources==

Official docs:
PC-BSD User Guide - http://web.pcbsd.org/doc/10/html/pcbsd.html
GhostBSD Wiki - http://wiki.ghostbsd.org/
FreeBSD Handbook - http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/
OpenBSD FAQ - http://www.openbsd.org/faq/index.html

How to install OpenBSD 5.9 plus XFCE desktop environment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AFAqso-HVk [Open]

Manual pages:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi
http://man.openbsd.org/

Discussion:
FreeBSD Forums - https://forums.freebsd.org/
OpenBSD Mailing Lists - http://www.openbsd.org/mail.html