FreeBSD I LOVE YOU

[Mike Woods]

Anthony Atkielski wrote:

> At least someone is thinking of it.  There are a lot of PCs out there
> that are still in perfect working order, but are too slow to run the
> hugely bloated desktop operating systems (and the "server" versions
> thereof) that are popular today.  Efficient operating systems like UNIX
> can give these machines new life and purpose and save tremendous
> resources in the process.

We have here at work a whole load of p3 450's, tad old and not of great 
use as student machinesodd's where a lot of them where ultimatley 
desined for the bin, however a little while ago a getleman from our LRC 
asked me if it as possible to configure a printer to behave in a certain 
manner, intialy i said no but after some thought i got back to him and 
told him i might be able to develop a unix based system to do the job 
and here i am several months later in the process of producing a boot cd 
for the first release and having 5 print stations and a one development 
station all running freebsd, all the previously doomed p3 450's and 
hopefully i'll have about 10 more deployed before i go to my new job.

The server too is a "Recycled" machine, the only new parts are it's raid 
controller, drives and raid cage and psu (old one was too small for the 
4 drives), most everything else came from an old p3 600 the boss was 
playing with and the case came from an old p2 300 server that was 
decommisioned when i was a student :)

I think it's fair to say *nix oses in general reinforce the idea that 
just because it's not bright spangly and new it doesnt mean it's useless 
but freebsd moreso purley because of it's superb hardware support and 
the fact that generaly it's just a case of install it and go :)

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Mike Woods
IT Technician