BSD on the $15 Laptop

I've been running OpenBSD 4.2 on my test box -- the VIA C3 Samuel-based thin client -- for a couple of months now. That's at least a year in dog months, and since I'm anxious to put Dru Lavigne's new "The Best of FreeBSD Basics" book to work, I wanted to do something I've never done before: Install a BSD on the $15 Laptop, the 1999 Compaq Armada 7770dmt.

Since I had the aforementioned month and then some experience with OpenBSD, it was naturally time to try something else.

The Compaq had successfully booted the NetBSD 2007 Live CD to a console; I didn't expect the laptop's 64 MB of RAM to run X with KDE, and I was in no way surprised when that didn't happen. But I figured that I could easily do a hard-drive install NetBSD 4.0.

That's where I began. But the NetBSD 4.0 install disc hung early in the pre-booting phase. It's funny, because as I said, a live CD from the same version did boot and run. To make sure I didn't have a bum CD, I tried it on my VIA test box. I got to the boot prompt, a point I couldn't reach on the Compaq. I even tried NetBSD 3.1. It stopped at the same point.

So I moved on to FreeBSD. Version 7.0 just went stable, so I downloaded and burned it. Everything was going fine ... except FreeBSD wasn't having much luck working with my hard drive. It took awhile just to get to the point where I could partition the drive. While the BSD partitioning process isn't as crystal clear as that of your average Linux distribution by any margin, at least it offers some defaults to start with.

I wanted to preserve a little Linux partition on the Compaq's small 3GB drive. I had everything backed up and was willing to lose the whole thing if necessary.

I chose the default partitioning scheme, but when I instructed the installer to write my partitions, the operation failed.

I'm not saying that FreeBSD won't install on this 1999 Compaq laptop -- I'm pretty sure I could make it happen with a little attention paid to reformatting the hard drive.

But I still had OpenBSD 4.2 at my disposal.

And yes it did install. And that's what I'm using now to write this entry. My experience with OpenBSD on the VIA test box didn't hurt, nor did the excellent OpenBSD FAQ.

OpenBSD has been extremely solid when it comes to installing and running on the equipment I have at my disposal, and this install was yet another testament to the quality and depth of the project.

If I've learned anything in the past year and a half, it is this: You can run many flavors of Linux and BSD, even with the X Window System, in only 64 MB of RAM. It's not ideal, and everything runs way better on my 256 MB VIA box and 1 GB Gateway laptop (the $0).

But you can have a graphical display, up-to-date applications and a credible computing experience with 9- or 10-year-old hardware.

(I think This Old PC, my Pentium II MMX-equipped, 256 MB white box is now in its 11th year of service, and it would be a great candidate for Debian, OpenBSD, Puppy or any number of other operating systems and user environments. I only wish my 1996 Macintosh Powerbook 1400 offered a sole credible choice beyond Mac OS 7.6-9.)

And if you enjoy using the command line, it really doesn't matter if your PC is older, slower and equipped with even less memory. Even 16 MB will do it. My way-old Dell 386SX-25 (that's 25 MHz) that started with 2 MB of RAM and eventually topped out at 8 or 10 MB wouldn't do so well -- no modern Linux would even boot on it -- but anything from the 486 era and all things Pentium could run ... something.

I keep meaning to broaden my OS horizons. That's why I wanted to investigate the three main BSD projects in the first place. I'm drawn to them by the development teams' control of and care for a larger portion of the system, extending beyond the kernel and into what is called userland. And in the case of OpenBSD, the emphasis on out-of-the-box security, bolstered with plenty of cryptography, is something I'm very interested in, both on the server and the desktop.

I also greatly appreciate the prodigious amount of high-quality documentation that accompanies each of the top three BSD projects. FreeBSD has a handbook that hovers around 1,000 pages in PDF form. It more than makes up for the small number of aftermarket book titles on the leading BSD flavor, although those that are out there are also of very high quality.

NetBSD and OpenBSD also have lengthy FAQs that measure a couple hundred pages in PDF, and all three projects put a lot of work into making man pages, comprehensive and up to date.

Note: Since I wrote this entry, I've figured out the not-so-mysterious mystery regarding where the "master" Fvwm configuration file lives, and that's made it easier for me to customize my X menus and have them looking the way I want (which begins with OpenBSD's default Fvwm configuration, one I prefer to the three other samples included on the base system).