[Tfug] BSD install on via C3

[Bexley Hall]

Hi Marco,

> I'm trying to install BSD on one GA-PCV2 board with via
> C3 processor 800 Mhz.

Not familiar with this product.  Is there a particular
reason driving you to use it?  (just curious)

> I've used Unix before (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX) but I never
> tried one free BSD version. So my questions are: 
> 
> 1. Which BSD distribution do you recommend for this board?

I ran FreeBSD from v 0.9 through about 2.2.8 (IIRC)
before jumping ship to NetBSD.  FreeBSD tends to be
more "feature-oriented" whereas NetBSD aims for
stability over a wide range of platforms (at the time
I jumped ship, I think FBSD still only ran on x86).

I'm currently running NBSD 5.0 on two hosts and have been
pleased with its stability and performance (but, I tend
to use my machines differently than most folks so YMMV)
 
> 2. At start-up seem really slow, I've installed ubuntu
> on an usb external HD and hangs when was reading the
> hard-disk. With freeBSD on an usb stick was taking ages to
> load the kernel.

Can't you netboot?  Or, use a USB CDROM?  Or, are you planning
on having no rotating media at all in your finished system?

> 3. The X window with freeBSD starts with twm, it's that
> the default? doesn't have anything.

The BSD's differ from the Linux distros in that they
concentrate on giving you a system to which you add whatever
user interfaces you want, etc.  For example, if I want to run
KDE, I install a KDE package (or build it from scratch).
This allows most of the *BSD effort to concentrate on the
operating system (kernel and basic services) itself and
leave the "applications" out of the picture.  You can
upgrade your applications (packages) without bothering to
mess with the operating system itself -- the two aren't
tightly coupled as they might be in some linux distros.

E.g., most of the time I run under tvtwm as I don't need the
bloat of a "desktop" when I am writing or debugging code...

> I know that I can find many of these info on the oracle
> (google) but since there is this list...

HTH