It is a real trouble to install the freeBSD first time, so here is a quick installation guide. 

Dual Booting

If you want to dual boot your machine, use any disk partition utility and create a new parition, or you can shrink your existing partitions to make room for freeBSD. Use PartitionMagic or similar program for windows to perform this task. It is also adviseable to backup your data.

Getting Media

I am not going to say much about this. There are links to various ftp mirrors at www.freebsd.org and the directory structure is fairly self-explanatory. There are however several choices for ISO. You should choose the miniinst ISO. It is small and will include everything you need for the base system.

Starting Installation

After, the CD boots up you will enter the...ahh.....majestic sysinstall. You can safely ignore most of the options and just choose a standard installation. Most of the install process is pretty easy and anyone who has some experience with linux or unix will be able to handle it without much stress. However, creating partitions and dealing with drives will seem very odd to your standard linux user. 

Hard Disc Management in FreeBSD

Ok, the first thing to get used to here is that IDE drives are not hda, hdb...etc. They are ad0, ad1 and so forth. SCSI discs are da0, da1...and so on. There is one other thing that is going to freak some people out. You create slices, not partitions, on the disc and then create partitions within those slices. For example, the first partition in the first slice on the first IDE disc would be ad0s1a. Just accept it.

Partitioning

Sysinstall will lead you through the partitioning and its fairly easy to understand. The first part will ask you to choose a disc or discs to partition and then will show you a "slice editor." This is where you will create your slice. I advise you to only make one. While multiple slices are easy to deal with, it just adds complication. If this is not your first installation of a BSD type OS, then you can ignore me and why are you reading this again?

After creating your slice, you will be prompted to choose the drive(s) to install an MBR on. The FreeBSD boot loader is nothing to write home about, but it tends towards working. After this step, you can create partitions. There is not much to say here. At the top of the screen it will show your slice(s) and when one of them is selected you can use the controls to create a partition on it. You will need at least a root and swap partition. On the non-swap partitions it is usually a good idea to enable soft-updates.

Distribution Sets

This is a simple section, select minimal or what is more suitable for you.

Continue Installation 

The rest of this is pretty simple. Make sure you install from the CD and not the Internet. The bulk of the install is now done. After it copies files to your disc, it will start the configuration process. This is all pretty self-evident, but there are a couple things you should know. 

Don't be scared by the names, in *BSD devices are named after their drivers. There is also a short description after the name, so you should be able to choose the right one. The rest of the network config is easy, just follow the prompts.

You can pretty much ignore this, you may want to look around for your own knowledge and of course you could pick a nice screen saver here, but other then that I would leave it alone for now.

All I have to say here is that if you live in the US, after you choose “America – North and South” hit the end key. The US is at the bottom of the list and hitting end is the quickest way there.

OK, welcome to the wonderful and amazing world of moused. Answer the first question truthfully, and then you can tweak the settings in the “Please configure your mouse” dialog. Whatever you do, be sure to enable the daemon. Also, for most users that is all you will have to do. You can safely ignore the other options.

At this point, the installer will ask you to install binary packages. Say no. These binaries are out of date and not included on our CD.

This isn't the most thrilling section, add a user when it asks you to and set a root password after that. The only thing I have to say about this process is when the new user dialog comes up leave the “Group:” box unchanged and add “wheel” to the Member groups. You also might want to set your shell to /bin/tcsh. As for setting the root password, if you can't handle that we have bigger problems.

Ok, next it will ask if you would like to visit the general config area. Select no and you will be brought back to the main menu. Exit the install, reboot without the CD in and enjoy the boot messages.