Installing Freebsd

You can read more about how to install FreeBSD at the FreeBSD website.

I installed FreeBSD on my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop. I created 3 partitons on the hard drive. The first partition is approximately 8 GB's and I run Windows XP from it. The second partition, also about 8 GB's, had FreeBSD 4.x on it. The third partition is a storage partition of about 3 GB's and is formatted in fat. The laptop has the following hardware:

- 256MB of RAM
- 20GB hard drive
- Intel 82845 Graphics Adapter, 16MB vram
- Sigma Tel C-Major Audio

Before installing FreeBSD you should know what sound card, and video card you have and the amount of video ram. This will aid you in configuring sound and X Windows.

In preparation for installing FreeBSD 6.2 on my laptop, I booted into Windows XP and reformatted the partition that contained FreeBSD 4.x and then deleted it. This newly created unused space would be where I would install FreeBSD 6.2.

Beginning the Installation - I put the FreeBSD 6.2 CD disc1 into the CD drive and booted the computer into FreeBSD[default] from it. It then presented me with a Country Selection Menu and using the arrow and tab keys I selected U.S.

Finally the Sysinstall Menu appears. The Standard installation is recommended, and that is the option I choose.