Desktop hobby programmer looking at BSD, Linux, and Windows?

Question

I'm a desktop user, host my website through Apache, and program occasionally as a hobby. Now, I currently use Windows XP, and plan on it due to its widespread use. However, I wish to dual-boot along with something else, a BSD or Linux variant.

I've dabbled with Linux before, a couple different distributions, but not enough to truly make any judgments. What has drawn me to BSD over Linux though is that it's, at least relatively, structured and organized, but I'm muddled with anything else in relation to BSD.

I was wondering if anyone had feedback on this. Linux vs BSD in general, BSD for general desktop use, etc.

Answer 1

BSD is just a Distro of linux so its a same thing, just different distribution there are alot of different distributions of linux, FreeBSD,Red Hat,Ubuntu,Fedora, for home use I'd recommend UBUNTU, but each linux distro usually has its own structure, however they all are based on the same kernel.

Answer 2

A few years ago I set up a dual boot system as part of an OS course. Never really did much with Linux as MS is what is used at work.

Here's what I did:

Start with a MS windows machine or load windows FIRST!

You will have to repartition your hard drive to accomodate Linux. So with a new HD only partition a portion of the drive for windows and leave the rest untouched as linux will partition it.
For an existing installation try using Partition Commander to shrink the windows partition and create Linux Partitions or atleast available space.

The Linux install I used was from the "Dummies Guide to Linux" it uses a program called LILO (Linux Loader) to determine which OS to boot. It is this program which will boot first and then point to the selected OS. This is why you want windows loaded first as the windows install doesn't consider using another OS and establishes itself on the boot sector of the drive. The Linux install will move the win boot code and replace it with LiLo.

At the time Linux was very fussy about the Video card. I couldn't get the GUI to work until I replaced the card with an older unit. But once that was done it worked without further issue.