Hi, Can u send me "Comprehensive guide to FreeBSD" and "The Complete FreeBSD". I install freebsd but i don't have any books. If u can't send me plz tell me where i will be able to get those books from. Thanx,

Well, FreeBSD is not Linux. It is an entire OS of its own, while Linux is a just a kernel that uses the GNU operating system. FreeBSD has its own license. Linux is licensed under the GPL. Although Linux borrows some from BSD-style unix, most of it is based upon System V. Linux has more support, but FreeBSD can run just about any Linux program. Just thought I'd mention that because the general media, as some retailers, seem to confuse the two. Second, if you look in: /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html , the entire FreeBSD handbook is available to you. Third, the books you are looking for should be available at Amazon.com -- both used and new. Bookstores such as Borders carry FreeBSD Unleashed, and retailers like MicroCenter carry FreeBSD - The Complete Reference, and The Complete FreeBSD 4th Edition (latest). Your cheapest option is still Amazon, though. I have each of the books you are referring to, but I run a web site dedicated to FreeBSD, and still am making good use of those. Sorry. Person-to-person, I am firmly convinced FreeBSD is far better than anything Linux has to offer. Slackware probably comes the closest, but lacks the neat features of FreeBSD. Good to run across someone moving in that direction. Is there a general question you have about setup?

Are you familiar with firewalling? If not, I am currently working on a modification of rc.firewall. The options in the default rc.firewall script serve better as examples, and really are not ideal for day-to-day. The modification is not anything elaborate, or complicated. It's designed for dynamic connections. But, each option will drop all packets from unestablished connections. All priviledged ports are stealthed, even to established connections. Established connections are based upon a dynamic rule that checks to see if the connection was established from the local machine. For troubleshooting, I've figured in ping and traceroute, where the default firewall does not. In a nutshell, all the basic, common sense stuff is taken into account. I plan to improve it as I go along. This is just the first version. I'm only putting it together for fun, and to prevent others in my same situation from having to spend months sifting through sparse documentation, and dealing with those too elitist to come down off their high-technical perches long enough to explain things in normal English. If you're interested, I can let you know when it is done and available. Like I said, it's not overly-involved, but it stealths the machine and does the job. Actually, I think people in general place too much faith in firewalls, anyway. Just a thought.

To UNIXHEAD, Hi, Thanx for the help. I edited my previous message and add 2 more names, unleashed and & complete reference and posted in 3 foru, unix, linux and solaris. Thanx a lot for the all the infos specially of firewall but I ain't unix guru like u. Plz mail or tell me the name of u r website(& u r email id if possible) you mentioned in u r 1st mssg. Well, I have a setup problem though I havn't installed it, only downloaded iso images of 1st & 2nd disk (again I coulnd't get 3rd & 4th as they said in their handbook). So plz check the following & suggest ! A) I have a 40 gb hdd of IDE type and planning to install freebsd and win2k svr so i need dual booting. i wanna install win in 2 primary partitions, c->20 GB & d-10 GB. Now, plz tell me how many partitions do i need for freebsd and how much spece should i allocate for each partition ? Specially i'd like to ask u about the boot partition because people say redhat wants 100 mb whereas suse wants 30 mb. I also like to install as many freebsd packages as possible. B) You say freebsd can run linux apps. At this point I have a question. I use motorolla sm56 speakerphone modem(internal) I downloaded it's driver in .rpm and it works only in suse 7.2. As far as I know freebsd doesn't support .rpm so how is it possible to install and make it work in freebsd. Installing that driver is 2 step procedure; 1st step:- i type in terminal the command, rpm -i sm56_xxx.rpm 2nd step:- I again type "sm56setup" when I get the mssg to complete the installation. A modem is very important to me and i simply won't be able to purchase another. HELP ME.