Help a Newbie!!!

It's always good to see someone trying BSD rather than just following the Linux route.

I'm not familiar with PCBSD, but I gather that it's a repackaging of FreeBSD, which I am familiar with. Exactly which version of hjsplit did you download (do you have a URL?)? I ask because I couldn't find a native version of hjsplit for BSD, and there doesn't seem to be one in the rather extensive FreeBSD Ports collection. The nearest I could find is a Java version of hjsplit, which would certainly run on PCBSD if you have Java installed.

Most software for BSD comes in the form of source code packages which you have to compile and install (sounds complicated but it's normally just a question of typing "make" and "make install" in the appropriate directory) but hjsplit seems to be written in Kylix (a Delphi-like system from Borland) and I'm not sure that this was ever available for FreeBSD.

I looked on the HJSplit page (http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit) and found no mention of a BSD version of HJSplit. I did see a Linux version though. However, if you actually got the .zip version, you got the Windows version and that won't work. You would need to get the Linux .tar.gz file and extract that. It does have a non-standard library requirement (Kylix) and not knowing if Linux and BSD libraries are compatible, and guessing they are not, I doubt it will work well for you.

I did see something that is right up your alley. Somebody did a port of HJSplit to a general UNIX audience at http://lxsplit.sourceforge.net/. It is advertised as being compatible with the BSDs. So get the source tarball, extract it, then execute "make" and then as root, "make install" and you are done. You will need to have a compiler installed for those steps.

BSD - Because a ~3% user base is just tooooo mainstream!

I'm not sure that I'd judge the merits of an OS by its user base alone, otherwise I'd be posting in one of the Windows forums.

BSD is far more a server platform than a desktop one, largely due to its legendary stability. Being interested in OS internals I like it as one of the only examples of a true Unix whose source code I can access. (The only other one I can think of is Solaris.)

I wouldn't knock any OS - they all have their strengths and weaknesses - and it's good to see people investigating the less mainstream ones.