Selecting a Canned Distribution Set

Figure 2.4 shows the Choose Distributions menu.

Figure 2.4. Selecting the distribution.

A "distribution" of FreeBSD refers to the subset of available software you can choose to install. Not all software is appropriate for all usersif you're not interested in working with the source code, for instance, you don't have to install it. If you have the space, though, I suggest that you select the All option. If you are running a server and you are sure you will not need the X Window System, you can select the Developer option instead. If you select an option that doesn't include the source code, you cannot build a new kernel or upgrade the system through CVSup (unless you download all the sources while running CVSup, which negates the space-savings of not installing the sources here). If you select an option that only installs the kernel sources but not the rest of the sources, you will be able to build a new kernel, but you still can't upgrade the system with CVSup. If you are a new user, you probably won't know what most of these packages are for. Therefore, I suggest you stick to one of the canned distributionspreferably, the All distribution.

Note

CVSup is a file synchronization system that automatically updates the FreeBSD operating system by connecting to servers and determining what has changed since the last time you ran CVSup. Any changes are automatically downloaded from the server and applied to the FreeBSD source code. This is much faster than downloading the entire source tree. With CVSup, only the things that have changed need to be downloaded. CVSup is covered in detail in Chapter 19.

To select a distribution, highlight the one you want and press the spacebar. You will then be asked whether you want to install the FreeBSD ports collection in addition to the distribution you selected. You really should install the ports collection (covered in detail in Chapter 16, "Installing Additional Software") unless you can't afford the 300MB of disk space it consumes; it provides an easy, lightweight mechanism for downloading, installing, and tuning thousands of additional programs compiled specifically for your FreeBSD system. Installing additional software is a breeze if you have the ports collection installed. Use the Tab key to select the option you want and then press Enter.

Next, you return to the Choose Distributions menu. The distributions you selected should be indicated with X marks; if you selected the All option, each of the distributions is selected. Use the up arrow to go to the Exit option and then press Enter.