PC-BSD9 32 or 64 / virtualbox / Lenovo W520

[Cowm10]

G'evening all,

I am dying to try the new 9.0 (and thank you, team, for providing it to the world (!) :-) ).

- I currently have a Lenovo W520, W7-64, 16 GB Ram, Nvidia, 1 HDD.
- I intend to try it first with a virtualbox. If all works well I will install to a dedicated partition and dual boot with W7.

A couple of questions if I may:
- Handbook is confusing: do I download either the DVD (and install that into a virtualbox I will have created) or the virtualbox image (and then???)?
- Better to install the 32 bit or the 64 bit?
- Are there experiences with installing PC-BSD on recent Lenovo's (like my W520) yet? As in do's / don'ts?

Thank you in advance for your replies

[kmoore134]

You can use either the DVD to install into VirtualBox, or download a
pre-made VirtualBox disk image, which is faster

As to 64/32, if you have 16GB ram, then I would think 64bit is the
obvious choice

[Cowm10]

Thank you

[Cowm10]

As my dog would express (I have a Rottweiler, you know how they can look at you?):

Holy f*ck(!)

Gentlemen (and ladies ) developers of both PC-BSD and FreeBSD, I salute you deeply (!)

I installed it expecting 'pff, it probably isn't going to work since BSD and Linux always give problems on the hardware I happen to have bought', but no: without even remotely trying to configure anything in the 64b virtual box, it is working like a charm: fast, youtube flash works, sound works, and it is not slower as W7-64 bit, inside which it is running ().

My deep respect to all of you for what you have made, and my sincere thanks for it: I can't wait to leave Windows 7 behind and move over to FreeBSD, and it finally seems to be happening. Only 1 thing left to solve first: find out how to migrate Outlook 2010 to an (at least equal, but hopefully better) mail client under BSD. I don't think Thunderbird is it, it seems way to much a resource hog.

I'm out, to:
1. Find a mail client;
2. Ask the mrs if we can donate some money to you all for this really, really, really, GREAT job you've all done :-)

[bds]

hi Cowm10 --

thunderbird isn't too bad once it's finished with its initial sync. however, depending on your DE take a look at Evolution and/or Claws-mail.

if you're using Outlook in a corporate environment (i.e. Microsoft Exchange Server), getting Evolution set up seems to be problematic if you try to use the Exchange functionality - i've had problems, altho you may not

otherwise IMAP is where it's at.

cheers!

[jaxxed]

Just curious if you (or anyone else) actually got PCBSD installed on the machine.

I have been working on getting it running on my new (used, but new to me) w520, and am kind of stalled.

I have a Len w520 (i7-2xxx) with 16GB and a 128GB mSATA, and 0.5TBHDD. It has an NVIDIA optimus 1000M 2GB/Intel 3000 HD graphics card set up in it.

The machine runs through the install process (9.1 release) without much problem. but I had lot's of problems just trying to start things up:

1. Installing using GPT messes things up, the machine won't can boot off of the disk. If you switch to MSDOS partition tables, then you can get the machine to boot. Install the MBR, or the boot fails. The machine has a new BIOS (1.39).

2. If you don't disable the NVidia Optimus (selecting either graphics cards in BIOS) then the machine will fail onX config, and reboot.

3. Wireless doesn't show up.