Hi !

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, James Buchanan wrote:
> I need to get rid of Windows tonight and install NetBSD (so preserving
> partitions isn't a problem at all.)  What is a problem for me is the
> hard disk:  if I am greeted with something like setting my disk's
> geometry, (I have a Seagate Barracuda 40GB HDD) what do I do, in terms
> of cylinders, heads, tracks and sectors?

Something like "accept what BIOS thinks" should work in most cases. I had only
one machine so far not booting afterwards.

> Also, I only have the first CD of NetBSD.  I need the basic NetBSD
> system, with GCC, basic X setup (afterstep is my favourite), printing
> support (CUPS), SoundBlaster Audigy 5.1 card support, Xfree86 3.6 +,
> Emacs, mail programme (mutt will do), and a D-Link DSL200 USB ADSL
> modem.  Is all the software I need on the first CD-ROM?

No. You just have the base system. But if you have a directory calles "sources"
on this disk, you can use pkgsrc to build all packages you need more or less
automatically. To get the precompiled packages, look at ftp.netbsd.org.
I usually have CVS pkgsrc handy and with fresh installations, i take this
pkgsrc and build everything with this newest repository. Having the distfiles
current mostly all the time, this is very useable.

But there are large things, KDE for example needs about 8 hours to build on a
1.6 GHz P-III

...Michael

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