A step-by-step guide to installing FreeBSD 5. It assumes moderate experience with linux and leaves you with a fully updated FreeBSD system. FreeBSD Installation A. 5.x vs 4.x The first thing to understand about FreeBSD is that there are two lines of development. The -STABLE branch is marked with a 4.x version number and the most recent version is 4.10. It is well tested and very solid, but does not include the most recent technology. The -CURRENT branch, marked with a 5.x version, is the “unstable” branch. However, it is nicely stable at the moment and is coming along quite well. Most users should go with 5.x and these instructions are only valid for that tree. NOTE: DragonFlyBSD ( www.dragonflybsd.org ) is a continuation of the 4.x line. It uses lock-less (no mutexes) SMP support and a Light Weight Kernel Threading system. It has a lot of promise and is developing at a breakneck pace, but it should still be thought of as “R/D.” B. Getting Media I am not going to say much about this. T...