System to install FreeBSD

[cpet]

On 2015-02-24 13:52, zep wrote:
> On 02/24/2015 02:40 PM, BINDU PULIYANKODAN KAROTH wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I am planning to buy a system to install FreeBSD for training on UNIX
>> Administration. My broad choices are to go for either a laptop or a 
>> desktop.
>> 
>> Laptop
>> ------
>> From looking around the web , I found that Laptops are generally 
>> windows
>> compatible and may run in to issues with other OS.
>> Can you suggest me some good laptops that would be good for this 
>> purpose.
>> 
>> Desktop
>> -------
>>  If I choose to go for a desktop ( I do not have any specific
>> hardware in mind) is it okay if go with any of them available in the 
>> market?
>> 
>> Also , in general
>> 1) Are there any specific system requirements in terms of the memory 
>> and
>> hard drive
>> or other requirements
>> 2) Is it necessary to purchase a system with any UNIX OS in it , to 
>> ensure
>> that it will work fine with BSD.
>> 
>> Kindly advise
>> 
>> 
> 
> given that it's for training, wouldn't it make more sense to be pretty
> much hardware agnostic and use virtulization (either virtualbox, xen, 
> or
> any of several commercial options) and make the BSD machine a VM that
> you can snapshot back to after training is done?

You can get a el cheapo ATOM box for cheap if you want a dedicated box 
for testing and learning. Personally I would run it in a VM if I was you 
but. You are entitled to do as you wish. SuperMicro makes nice servers 
and desktops which are known to be fully compatible with Linux/BSD iX 
systems does as well but I think they stopped making desktops. You need 
to be careful of the MB you buy if you want to build your own learn to 
build a desktop as well as UNIX would be good.

My 2 cents.