On 11/09/06, jan gestre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 9/11/06, Bob Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I have always wanted to better understand Unix, and so I finally made the > decision to switch some of my office PCs over to either a Unix or Linux > system. With office suites like OpenOffice, I felt that I would be able to > transition away from Windows with minimal disruption to my business. So, I > downloaded the .iso images from FreeBSD, Suse, and Fedora. I initially > favored FreeBSD, since it seemed to have the closest lineage to "pure" > Unix, > and that was important to me, but after many, many attempts to install > both > the OS and Gnome desktop environment, I threw up my hands. > > > > In brief, the installation process is just awful. After multiple attempts > on > an admittedly older machine (Pentium II 266Mhz, 256KB ram, 30GB hard > drive, > S3 Virge graphics card), I was able to get the FreeBSD OS installed, but > could not configure Gnome or KDE properly. The documentation is sketchy at > best. I had to learn about X11, Xorg, XFree86, and all of the gory history > of X before I could even begin to use ee and know to edit the /etc/rc.conf > file. The installation process did not recognize my graphics card or > Ethernet connection, and all I could get was a crude 600x800 display. And > DesktopBSD was even worse. > > > > I then repartitioned my drive and sequentially installed Fedora Core 5 amd > then Suse 10.1. Both were EASY to install, Fedora in particular recognized > all of my peripherals, and I was up and running with it in about two > hours. > Conversely, FreeBSD took me multiple days and has still left me > bewildered. > Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I feel that FreeBSD will never > achieve broader acceptance (even with momentum building for alternative > OS) > among people with modest technical proficiency and fairly simple > requirements (i.e., spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, email). > FreeBSD has an awful "out of the box" experience. It's too bad, because I > think FreeBSD is probably a better OS, but I'll never really know. > Regards, > > too bad, you experienced that, the FreeBSD sysinstall is not that really hard, it may seem daunting at first because of its text mode but it is very straight forward, i guess you have to read the handbook over and over again to fully comprehend the things you missed why things like X is not working, it will also help if you will include the error messages as to why you can't run/install gnome or kde. imo you missed some dependencies that's why you're having a hard time.
Discussions like these leave me lost for words... The last time I had trouble with a FreeBSD install, it was because sysinstall neglected to install a kernel! (I remember the days when people used to complain about (n)curses-based Linux installs... Fire up Windows XP's setup.exe, and what do you get?!) Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I really don't see what the problem is with sysinstall. To me it's the best thing this side of YaST for getting (certain areas of) system administration done. (Yeah, I know a lot of you probably hate YaST in particular or Linux in general... whilst I like FreeBSD, I have to say that it really suffers in comparison to Linux in the area of driver support. I know that's not all the FBSD developers' fault, but when you're sat there fighting with a piece of recalcitrant hardware, surprisingly enough assigning blame to where it belongs is often the last thing on your mind!) It's really hard to make a cock-up with FreeBSD installation - apart from not knowing how much space to set aside! There really ought to be something about that in the manual.... This is going off-topic quite a bit, but the same could be said for NetBSD (not, in my experience, with OpenBSD.) They're really hard to cock-up if you just *follow* *the darned* *instructions*. After coming away from Windows, it's actually nice to have some decent documentation! Jeff Rollin _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
