Re: Newbie Experience (As promised)
Dear Very Helpful and Informative FreeBSD List, I installed FreeBSD on Friday Night and tried very hard to get it all working. My initial X problem actually fixed itself (you can imagine my surprise), however, even with that, our computer is useless as a desktop (or anything else) without an internet connection. My hardware is unsupported and despite my best efforts, I decided it would be better to expedite the process and I installed Mepis Linux. Which version of FreeBSD did you install. I would hardly describe it the way another newbie did one week ago. It was a good challenge. I'll wait until I'm a better administrator and there's more support for hardware I might have. The only really annoying thing was that I perpetually had trouble mounting my usb flash drive. I think this was a filesystem problem. What was the problem? I am a newbie too ... my second week on FreeBSD. I could manage mounting my 1G Memorex traveldrive without a bother. The usbd daemon is configured to run on boot. Depending on which USB port I connect it to, I do something like: mount -t msdosfs [-o ro] /dev/da0s1 my_mount_point I prefer to use -o ro whenever I mount a file system on some directory and I don't want to take any kind of risks. Thanks for any help you've offered, Joel Joel J. Adamson Arlington, MA Just to share it with you. I had a couple of other fixes to do. I could not get my AMD PcNet 97c79x ethernet card to work with my FreeBSD 6.1 installation, although the device could be detected and configured through sysinstall / ifconfig. My packets just won't get past the LAN card on to the wire. So I swapped it with another card I had on a different PC which dual boots to RHEL and Windows. That is a Realtek card, and it worked fine with FreeBSD. The other issue I faced was with configuring my old 3-button Logitech mouse. But even that works now on X - some configuration changes. I disabled moused by removing moused entries from /etc/rc.conf - I felt it was making the mouse freeze in the X term. Get some of the window managers - they help. Afterstep / XFCE / FVWM are good points to start. Cheers, Andy ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience (As promised)
On 2006-09-17 12:22, Joel Adamson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear Very Helpful and Informative FreeBSD List, I installed FreeBSD on Friday Night and tried very hard to get it all working. My initial X problem actually fixed itself (you can imagine my surprise), however, even with that, our computer is useless as a desktop (or anything else) without an internet connection. Well, maybe not completely useless. You can still grab packages from the network, using another system, transfer them to the target installation with a CD-ROM disk or other medium and install without a network connection. In general, though, a FreeBSD system without any sort of network connection is (IMHO) something like a 'crippled' computer. In fact, these days, *any* desktop system without some sort of access to a network is crippled in one or more ways. My hardware is unsupported and despite my best efforts, I decided it would be better to expedite the process and I installed Mepis Linux. What hardware are you talking about? Maybe it *is* supported, but it was not very obvious how to configure or set it all up. If you still want to give FreeBSD a try, please try to install it, then run the following commands, saving their output to a file and find a way to post these files to us (i.e. use a floppy disk or something else, like a USB stick): # dmesg # pciconf -lv I would hardly describe it the way another newbie did one week ago. It was a good challenge. I'll wait until I'm a better administrator and there's more support for hardware I might have. The only really annoying thing was that I perpetually had trouble mounting my usb flash drive. I think this was a filesystem problem. Mounting filesystems is probably not as intuitive or automatic as it could have been. If you give FreeBSD another try, as I said above, then you can try showing us the output of: # usbdevs -v Run this command when logged in as `root', save its output to a file and post this file to us as a text attachment. We'll help you with the rest of the things needed to discover more about your USB flash disk and how to mount it. Thanks for any help you've offered, Joel You're most welcome. You know how to find us if you need more help with FreeBSD either some time soon now, or later :-) Regards, Giorgos ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Newbie Experience (As promised)
Dear Very Helpful and Informative FreeBSD List, I installed FreeBSD on Friday Night and tried very hard to get it all working. My initial X problem actually fixed itself (you can imagine my surprise), however, even with that, our computer is useless as a desktop (or anything else) without an internet connection. My hardware is unsupported and despite my best efforts, I decided it would be better to expedite the process and I installed Mepis Linux. I would hardly describe it the way another newbie did one week ago. It was a good challenge. I'll wait until I'm a better administrator and there's more support for hardware I might have. The only really annoying thing was that I perpetually had trouble mounting my usb flash drive. I think this was a filesystem problem. Thanks for any help you've offered, Joel Joel J. Adamson Arlington, MA ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Thursday 14 September 2006 01:21, Kevin Brunelle wrote: As for the GNU tools, yes most sysadmins use some of them (although not always). I know that BSD tar handles gzip and bzip2 just fine ( -z and -j respectively). So I know I wouldn't download gtar just for that feature. In fact, as I discovered a few days ago (after all, how often does one read tar(1)'s manpage?), you only need to use -z and -j when creating a tar archive. bsdtar(1) recognises bzip2 and gzip compression on reading an archive and handles them automatically. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Sep 14, 2006, at 12:29 AM, Jonathan McKeown wrote: On Thursday 14 September 2006 01:21, Kevin Brunelle wrote: As for the GNU tools, yes most sysadmins use some of them (although not always). I know that BSD tar handles gzip and bzip2 just fine ( - z and -j respectively). So I know I wouldn't download gtar just for that feature. In fact, as I discovered a few days ago (after all, how often does one read tar(1)'s manpage?), you only need to use -z and -j when creating a tar archive. bsdtar(1) recognises bzip2 and gzip compression on reading an archive and handles them automatically. old habits die hard :-0 Chad --- Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC Your Web App and Email hosting provider chad at shire.net ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Thursday 14 September 2006 08:40, Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote: On Sep 14, 2006, at 12:29 AM, Jonathan McKeown wrote: In fact, as I discovered a few days ago (after all, how often does one read tar(1)'s manpage?), you only need to use -z and -j when creating a tar archive. bsdtar(1) recognises bzip2 and gzip compression on reading an archive and handles them automatically. old habits die hard :-0 Exactly. I wondered, when I saw the entry in tar(1)'s manpage, how many other little tricks I don't know because I just do it the old way. If I ever get a supply of tuits (round ones are best, apparently), I might start re-reading the documentation for things I already know how to do, just to find out what I'm missing. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Tuesday 12 September 2006 06:16, Jeff Rollin wrote: I let a lot of BSD comments about Linux go unpunished, but this one has always got me. BSD had to be *almost totally rewritten* to avoid ATT licensing issues... added to the fact that I wouldn't be surprised if it's hard to find a single line of code IRIX, Solaris et al these days share between themselves and with V7. Not only that, but I understand that a lot of Unix sysadmins download the GNU tools as well, because (among other things) they do nifty things like being able to unzip, gunzip or bunzip a tarball before untarring it. And the amount of software available from people like KDE to install in FreeBSD is staggering. I find the phrase almost totally rewritten to be misleading. It is true that the majority of the OS had been rewritten by the time of the lawsuit. That is what happens as hardware and software changes. You'd vomit if you had a V7 kernel on modern hardware (even if you got all the hardware supported the internals were designed for a different time period). The code had evolved slowly over time from the base of where it had started. By the time the lawsuit was brought up and the licensing issues went to court only 0.016% of the files had to be removed and another 0.388% of them had to add copyright notices. I hardly find needing to rewrite less than half a percent (0.404%) of the operating system as a total rebuild. Along with that less than half a percent was a legal order to not use the name Unix but the 99.59% of code that was Unix one moment didn't suddenly cease to exist or change forms when that name was removed. The lawsuit was settled in January 1994, largely in Berkeley's favor. Of the 18,000 files in the Berkeley distribution, only 3 had to be removed and 70 modified to show USL copyright notices. A further condition of the settlement was that USL would not file further lawsuits against users and distributors of the Berkeley-owned code in the upcoming 4.4BSD release. [From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution#Net.2F2_and_legal_troubles but easily found elsewhere as well if one investigates.] Does the OS have any original code left in it? I certainly hope not but the pedigree is there. It started from the original code and changed a little bit at a time. Even though FreeBSD can't be called Unix today, it evolved from Unix. Linux arose from ideas as presented in the POSIX standard and GNU community. I agree that Linux is not an emulator. It is just a different interpretation of Unix. Solaris is different, BSD is different, AIX is different, etc. While some did evolve from the actual roots and Linux didn't... I do not believe that is reason alone to snub Linux. Anyway, all modern day Unix systems have different code than the original Unix systems. It's part of the reality of software. As for the GNU tools, yes most sysadmins use some of them (although not always). I know that BSD tar handles gzip and bzip2 just fine ( -z and -j respectively). So I know I wouldn't download gtar just for that feature. And I don't even consider it that large of a feature. If I had a tar which lacked it, I could certainly still manage that with one command line. GNU utilities have their benefits. Mainly, in my experience, that they're fairly common in the open source world and often you need them to use something which is created by them. I've had to download gawk and gsed before just to install a program without rewriting all the awk and sed code in it to be posix compliant, for example. I do have KDE on several computers I maintain for people and use a lot of software outside the base install. Once everything is setup... and for the most part, the difference between using BSD or Linux is minor. It's not anywhere near the difference between using Windows and Mac (for example). -Kevin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience -- Linux/BSD Differences
If I may comment as someone who knows only that BSD looks better to a newbie, it looks better because I only have to go to one place to read the FreeBSD manual. For Linux, there's documentation for all the little parts, and a community/wiki for any particular distribution, except that's a lot different from having a single document that covers almost everything. And for everything else, there's this list, which has a minimum of *attitude*, which is a contrast to many linux boards I've read. Joel On Tuesday 12 September 2006 06:16, Jeff Rollin wrote: I let a lot of BSD comments about Linux go unpunished, but this Joel J. Adamson Arlington, MA - Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls. Great rates starting at 1¢/min. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience -- Linux/BSD Differences
On 9/13/06, Joel Adamson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If I may comment as someone who knows only that BSD looks better to a newbie, it looks better because I only have to go to one place to read the FreeBSD manual. For Linux, there's documentation for all the little parts, and a community/wiki for any particular distribution, except that's a lot different from having a single document that covers almost everything. And for everything else, there's this list, which has a minimum of *attitude*, which is a contrast to many linux boards I've read. Joel On Tuesday 12 September 2006 06:16, Jeff Rollin wrote: I let a lot of BSD comments about Linux go unpunished, but this Si, y además no nos molestamos cuando escribimos en otro idioma xD. -- Linux is for people who hate Micro$oft. BSD is for people who love Unix ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On 11/09/06, Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote: Discussions like these leave me lost for words... Perhaps, although it seems you recovered quickly. :-) Heh. Maybe I ought to have said almost! Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I really don't see what the problem is with sysinstall. Credits: It's highly functional. It can configure a lot of things about a FreeBSD system, either during or after the installation of the system. It's CLI/remote-serial-console friendly. Actually there is one problem with sysinstall: Access to certain features (such as (g)vinum) is not possible from it - FreeBSD seems to have had (g)vinum for almost as long - if not longer - than Linux has had LVM. Nowadays, outside of Slackware, it seems that everyone not only has support for LVM, but also allows you to put / in it. Debits: It's oriented towards technical people. People who don't understand computers well in general, and the details of disk layouts in particular, tend to get hopelessly confused. Hmm. Windows has a partitioner too. Even worse, unlike most Linux/BSD installers' counterparts, unless you want to do something really simple (like wipe everything that isn't Windows off the first hard drive and install it on the first partition there; ugh) in my eXPerience it doesn't. bloody. work. Of course it's possible/probable that people who come to FreeBSD/Linux have never reinstalled Windows, though I know some technically pretty unsavvy people who have, by necessity (thanks to viruses). Not only do they usually not know how to access the help inside sysinstall, many times the help text is not available, or is not comprehensible unless you have the already-mentioned technical background. I guess I'm just jaded, I hardly notice... Fortunately, the outstanding docs available for FreeBSD do a lot to walk people through the process, even novices. Unfortunately, people want to use computers without having to read the docs. Just ask your mom/grandparents/etc. :-) I know; the infuriating thing for me is that this also applies to people who WOULD read the manual for something as simple as a food mixer! 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... Why would you think that? I'd imagine that most of the people using FreeBSD end up having a Linux box or two around for one reason or another. Hate is probably a strong word; nevertheless, a lot of BSD people I know/whose responses I've read on this and other lists don't rate Linux much. As for YaST, well, whatever gets the job done. It reminds me a bit too much of SMIT from AIX, or perhaps cPanel or Webmin, but other people seem to prefer such interfaces to a CLI prompt. The advantage of those over CLI's (I can't believe I'm saying this) is that what you can do is all laid out bare before you, instead of being squirrelled away in handbooks, FAQs, man and info pages, however good they may be. Jeff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On 11/09/06, backyard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote: Discussions like these leave me lost for words... Perhaps, although it seems you recovered quickly. :-) Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I really don't see what the problem is with sysinstall. I'm in that club myself. It takes a few times to get it down, but it is simple once you know the basic steps of getting FreeBSD on a box. The trick is of course understanding the basic steps which is where most don't take the time to research. I know I read through tha handbook a few times before I attempted my first go, and I know I messed up royally even still. But now its more frustrating to figure out what I want to do while the packages are downloading then anything else. Heh! Now it makes perfect sense to have one partition and multiple slices. It makes an fstab look a lot nicer. nothing more annoying then not having say a linux box boot because you selected the extended partitions number instead of the logical drive contained therein... and keeping track of a million partitions get old quick. Nowadays of course you can (almost) do this by having one /boot and one LVM partition, with the logical volumes within it. Plus, most filesystems allow for resizing (in both directions) and you can combine two or more disks into one volume group. Fortunately, the outstanding docs available for FreeBSD do a lot to walk people through the process, even novices. Unfortunately, people want to use computers without having to read the docs. Just ask your mom/grandparents/etc. :-) most people want to use everything without reading the manual. I think thats why there's labels on the toaster not to stick a fork in it, or a tag to not use a hair dryer in the shower... Personally I turn to the Cadillac shop manual when I want to tune up my eldo, it makes sense to me. I know software is the same way, but most people don't want to take any time figuring out what their doing; pardon my vulgarity but Taco Bell exists for a reason, man pages... 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... Why would you think that? I'd imagine that most of the people using FreeBSD end up having a Linux box or two around for one reason or another. I find it was for not reading the FreeBSD manuals... if people think FreeBSD is hard I cannot imagine what they think about Linux. Sure it has that flashy install program, well except Gentoo and maybe a few others, but upgrading the kernel can make setting up a FreeBSD box from scratch WITHOUT the manuals seem like a cake walk... Hmm. I'm pretty used to reconfiguring/upgrading the kenel on Linux, but never having done so in FBSD I'm a bit wary. I guess a lot of it depends on what you're used too. A lot of people using Linux these days, anyway, for good or ill probably don't reconfigure or upgrade the kernel - the distributors put everything but the kitchen sink in. These people would CERTAINLY be scared off by having to edit a text file to reconfigure the kernel, whereas these days in Linux you get a nice KDE window (make config is still horrible - but though it's uncommented (and undocumented) it's perfectly possible to reconfigure a linux kernel by editing /usr/src/.config) The nice thing about Linux is that in spite of all the noob-friendly gubbins, it's still possible to do things the same way you did 'em when FVWM was the hot news in the X Window world. Try getting the XP installer to let you choose which of several useless packages you want to forgo installing, a la Win9x. Jeff Rollin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On 11/09/06, backyard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Anton Shterenlikht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. When I first installed FreeBSD, circa 2003, version 4.9, the two reasons I chose it over Redhat and Debian were the simplicity of the installation and good manual. The install process on REdhat and Debian was awkward, at least for me, and I could not make them work on my old compaq armada laptop. In contrast just following the manual and choosing default install parameters I got Freebsd working fast. During the installation I actually learned a lot about unix and Freebsd, the sort of details which are important to know anyway. It is hard to find the right balance between simplicity and functionality. It seems the balance in the Freebsd install is about right. anton I've only been around since FreeBSD 5.4 myself, and found during installs that sysinstall would get confused if you changed your mind and went backwards through the menus to reconfigure options. it seems like the one in 6.1 is a lot better, but maybe I just move back and forth less... That being said once it is installed it is a million times easier to maintain and upgrade then any Linux I've used. I had an old Digital 486 I had to install Redhat 7.3 thinking I could easily update to the latest kernel. I found I had to go through so many dependancies to do so I finally said whatever kernel was there was good enough. Talk about having to be a GNU guru to get things installed correctly without clobbering the old stuff and running into trouble... I'm unconvinced you could take FreeBSD 4 box and run the kernel from 6.1 on it without changing anything else. Of late I was using Gentoo which I found to be FreeBSD like with its portage system, until recently when it seems they changed many system level interface stuff sometime after April 2006 and now I cannot seem to update it. The developers say you should not leave updating too long... True, if you are running FBSD 5.1 and need to update to 6.1, 5.3 is still there on the servers, but you do have to go through the steps of installing that intermediate version. Even a full system rebuild has blocking packages that boggle my mind as they were compile from source originally... Stuff usually blocks if something about the way it's installed has changed in an incompatible way - X.org moving from monolithic to modular builds, for example. This doesn't seem to have anything to do with (binary) packages. sysinstall isn't all that bad. It could be flashier, it could be graphical, it could be a lot of things. If it really bothers you that much you can make yourself a livecd system that brings up X and restores a basic install, or cvsups whatever system you want on your pc/sparc/whatever and builds it from source. that is the beauty of Unix. True Unix not an emulator like Linux. I let a lot of BSD comments about Linux go unpunished, but this one has always got me. BSD had to be *almost totally rewritten* to avoid ATT licensing issues... added to the fact that I wouldn't be surprised if it's hard to find a single line of code IRIX, Solaris et al these days share between themselves and with V7. Not only that, but I understand that a lot of Unix sysadmins download the GNU tools as well, because (among other things) they do nifty things like being able to unzip, gunzip or bunzip a tarball before untarring it. And the amount of software available from people like KDE to install in FreeBSD is staggering. That and the fact you get an OS with a set of base software and a compiler out of the box. Linux is only the kernel, you have to make hundreds of independant software packages work together to get a system running. Each one with their own independant configuration files, and hundreds of man pages to read. Even the rc.d system is a separate package. I doubt things magically work in FBSD, either. The maintainers probably have build scripts that automate fetching this or that, but it's all gotta be done. now I'm sure things have
Re: Newbie Experience
--- Jeff Rollin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/09/06, backyard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When I first installed FreeBSD, circa 2003, version 4.9, the two reasons I chose it over Redhat and Debian were the simplicity of the installation and good manual. The install process on REdhat and Debian was awkward, at least for me, and I could not make them work on my old compaq armada laptop. In contrast just following the manual and choosing default install parameters I got Freebsd working fast. During the installation I actually learned a lot about unix and Freebsd, the sort of details which are important to know anyway. It is hard to find the right balance between simplicity and functionality. It seems the balance in the Freebsd install is about right. anton I've only been around since FreeBSD 5.4 myself, and found during installs that sysinstall would get confused if you changed your mind and went backwards through the menus to reconfigure options. it seems like the one in 6.1 is a lot better, but maybe I just move back and forth less... That being said once it is installed it is a million times easier to maintain and upgrade then any Linux I've used. I had an old Digital 486 I had to install Redhat 7.3 thinking I could easily update to the latest kernel. I found I had to go through so many dependancies to do so I finally said whatever kernel was there was good enough. Talk about having to be a GNU guru to get things installed correctly without clobbering the old stuff and running into trouble... I'm unconvinced you could take FreeBSD 4 box and run the kernel from 6.1 on it without changing anything else. well cvsupping to Rel_5 and running a make buildworld make buildkernel make install kernel a reboot some mergemaster magic an installworld some more mergemaster magic and then cvsupping to Rel_6 and repeating is still lighttyears easier then watching the Linux kernel build stop, downloading the sources, configuring the dependancy properly, uninstalling the old, and reintalling the new. Especially when you will be tracing dependancies for weeks, unless your a pretty good programmer, which I am not, and know the dependancy chain of the core system. My point was the relative ease of upgrading, not the technical points of having missing object stubs. Of course you can't put a cummins deisel in a pinto without working on the frame first. Of late I was using Gentoo which I found to be FreeBSD like with its portage system, until recently when it seems they changed many system level interface stuff sometime after April 2006 and now I cannot seem to update it. The developers say you should not leave updating too long... True, if you are running FBSD 5.1 and need to update to 6.1, 5.3 is still there on the servers, but you do have to go through the steps of installing that intermediate version. well it was current as of april 8th when I made the tape. I went on vacation in May and got back on or about the 17th of May. Updating HAS NOT WORKED SINCE THEN. so if waiting 6 weeks is too long then so be it. I'm not going to constantly be emerging an update on a daily basis to stay current, especially since Openoffice seems to change its release tag everyother day on Gentoo and it puts a machine out of commission for 8-12 hours to build it. When: emerge --update --deep --newuse --emptytree world fails with PAM blocking, mozilla blocking, and now Xorg blocking as well as some other odds and ends thats when I say BSD is for me. to me it is incomprehensible why I cannot rebuild the system tree from scratch without software blocking the build. It was fun while it lasted, and it was nice to be away from winblows but in my experience linux is slower, a pain to configure, impossible to update, and a project started to emulate Unix. I'd much rather spend my time learning Unix, then fighting with the emulator. Even a full system rebuild has blocking packages that boggle my mind as they were compile from source originally... Stuff usually blocks if something about the way it's installed has changed in an incompatible way - X.org moving from monolithic to modular builds, for example. This doesn't seem to have anything to do with (binary) packages. well if I just delete the blockers and let them be fixed in the rebuild via them being dependancies it still fails. and use flags are basically useless in binary packages right? I don't like packages, I like to see that the port(age) will build on my machine, because I am a firm believer if you build it, it will run... Not to mention you can set the options you want. sysinstall isn't all that bad. It could be flashier, it could be graphical, it could be a lot of things. If it really bothers you that much you can make yourself a livecd system that brings up X and restores a basic install, or cvsups
Re: Newbie Experience
One question I often forget to ask myself is ; What is my end goal ? These days, if I want a non Windows desktop that is quick and easy to install / update I use this ; www.zenwalk.org [400MB .iso] For servers, I use FreeBSD :) Of course, you can use FreeBSD as a desktop machine too ... but the learning curve might be a bit steeper !!! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On 12/09/06, backyard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Jeff Rollin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/09/06, backyard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When I first installed FreeBSD, circa 2003, version 4.9, the two reasons I chose it over Redhat and Debian were the simplicity of the installation and good manual. The install process on REdhat and Debian was awkward, at least for me, and I could not make them work on my old compaq armada laptop. In contrast just following the manual and choosing default install parameters I got Freebsd working fast. During the installation I actually learned a lot about unix and Freebsd, the sort of details which are important to know anyway. It is hard to find the right balance between simplicity and functionality. It seems the balance in the Freebsd install is about right. anton I've only been around since FreeBSD 5.4 myself, and found during installs that sysinstall would get confused if you changed your mind and went backwards through the menus to reconfigure options. it seems like the one in 6.1 is a lot better, but maybe I just move back and forth less... That being said once it is installed it is a million times easier to maintain and upgrade then any Linux I've used. I had an old Digital 486 I had to install Redhat 7.3 thinking I could easily update to the latest kernel. I found I had to go through so many dependancies to do so I finally said whatever kernel was there was good enough. Talk about having to be a GNU guru to get things installed correctly without clobbering the old stuff and running into trouble... I'm unconvinced you could take FreeBSD 4 box and run the kernel from 6.1 on it without changing anything else. well cvsupping to Rel_5 and running a make buildworld make buildkernel make install kernel a reboot some mergemaster magic an installworld some more mergemaster magic and then cvsupping to Rel_6 and repeating is still lighttyears easier then watching the Linux kernel build stop, downloading the sources, configuring the dependancy properly, uninstalling the old, and reintalling the new. Especially when you will be tracing dependancies for weeks, unless your a pretty good programmer, which I am not, and know the dependancy chain of the core system. My point was the relative ease of upgrading, not the technical points of having missing object stubs. Of course you can't put a cummins deisel in a pinto without working on the frame first. Shrug. I've had problems trying to recompile the FreeBSD kernel too. Of late I was using Gentoo which I found to be FreeBSD like with its portage system, until recently when it seems they changed many system level interface stuff sometime after April 2006 and now I cannot seem to update it. The developers say you should not leave updating too long... True, if you are running FBSD 5.1 and need to update to 6.1, 5.3 is still there on the servers, but you do have to go through the steps of installing that intermediate version. well it was current as of april 8th when I made the tape. I went on vacation in May and got back on or about the 17th of May. Updating HAS NOT WORKED SINCE THEN. so if waiting 6 weeks is too long then so be it. 6 weeks too long? 6 months, *maybe*. I'm not going to constantly be emerging an update on a daily basis to stay current, especially since Openoffice seems to change its release tag everyother day on Gentoo and it puts a machine out of commission for 8-12 hours to build it. When: emerge --update --deep --newuse --emptytree world fails with PAM blocking, mozilla blocking, and now Xorg blocking as well as some other odds and ends thats when I say BSD is for me. to me it is incomprehensible why I cannot rebuild the system tree from scratch without software blocking the build. It was fun while it lasted, and it was nice to be away from winblows but in my experience linux is slower, a pain to configure, impossible to update, and a project started to emulate Unix. I'd much rather spend my time learning Unix, then fighting with the emulator. That was my point, that BSD was rewritten from the ground up to avoid ATT patents. So whilst some might consider BSD real unix, it's really only emulating V7 with Berkeley extensions. Even a full system rebuild has blocking packages that boggle my mind as they were compile from source originally... Stuff usually blocks if something about the way it's installed has changed in an incompatible way - X.org moving from monolithic to modular builds, for example. This doesn't seem to have anything to do with (binary) packages. well if I just delete the blockers and let them be fixed in the rebuild via them being dependancies it still fails. and use flags are basically useless in binary packages right? I don't like packages, I like to see that the port(age) will build on my machine, because I am a firm
Re: Newbie Experience
On Tuesday 12 September 2006 11:16, Jeff Rollin wrote: I'm unconvinced you could take FreeBSD 4 box and run the kernel from 6.1 on it without changing anything else. No, but the fact that you upgrade world+kernel in one go helps. FreeBSD also mantains a good level of back-compatibility. The 6x kernels have back compatibility options, and when you upgrade, the libraries from previous major releases are still usable by your packages.There are also compatibility ports if you want to install binaries built against previous versions. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Tuesday 12 September 2006 15:05, Jeff Rollin wrote: That was my point, that BSD was rewritten from the ground up to avoid ATT patents. So whilst some might consider BSD real unix, it's really only emulating V7 with Berkeley extensions. My understanding was that it was copyright rather than patents - and that the main reason for the settlement of the case between ATT and BSD/University of California was that when they started comparing code, there was actually more Berkeley code in ATT Unix than the other way round. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience #2
On Mon, 2006-09-11 at 08:46 -0400, Bob Walker wrote: Thanks to *all* who responded to my whining -- you've been great, and I am going to give FreeBSD another try. Apologies to all if I sounded like a twit... I was just eager to try something new as I have had it with MS products. Regards, Bob Walker Sounded like you were frustrated and venting to me. I cringed when you said you took a few production workstations to install to. Take one box, and some free time, no pressure, start with the handbook from scratch: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-pre.html You'll be pleased with your efforts when you're finished, and it only gets better from there. As other's have said, it's a community of people and we've all been there before at one time or another. Post your questions and you'll get answers, and probably in a more timely manner than you may expect. Don't give up. Bob ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience #2
Must have missed your rant Bob. You may want to check out PC-BSDhttp://www.pcbsd.org, a graphical installer that loads the KDE desktop on completion and rides on FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p2. If your hardware is supported in FreeBSD then it's pretty painless. I dropped Windows at my home over 4 months ago and am not missing it. On 9/11/06, Bob Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks to *all* who responded to my whining -- you've been great, and I am going to give FreeBSD another try. Apologies to all if I sounded like a twit... I was just eager to try something new as I have had it with MS products. Regards, Bob Walker Surveys Forecasts, LLC 2323 North Street Fairfield, CT 06824-1738 T +1.203.255.0505 F +1.203.549.0635 M +1.203.685.8860 www.safllc.com NOTICE: The information in this message is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this email in error, immediately contact the sender and destroy all copies of this email and all other documents included with it. Thank you. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
{expunged the old, typ}
I've only been around since FreeBSD 5.4
myself,
and
found during installs that sysinstall would
get
confused if you changed your mind and went
backwards
through the menus to reconfigure options. it
seems
like the one in 6.1 is a lot better, but maybe
I
just
move back and forth less...
That being said once it is installed it is a
million
times easier to maintain and upgrade then any
Linux
I've used. I had an old Digital 486 I had to
install
Redhat 7.3 thinking I could easily update to
the
latest kernel. I found I had to go through so
many
dependancies to do so I finally said whatever
kernel
was there was good enough. Talk about having
to be
a
GNU guru to get things installed correctly
without
clobbering the old stuff and running into
trouble...
I'm unconvinced you could take FreeBSD 4 box and
run
the kernel from 6.1 on
it without changing anything else.
well cvsupping to Rel_5 and running a make
buildworld
make buildkernel make install kernel a
reboot
some mergemaster magic an installworld some more
mergemaster magic and then cvsupping to Rel_6 and
repeating is still lighttyears easier then
watching
the Linux kernel build stop, downloading the
sources,
configuring the dependancy properly, uninstalling
the
old, and reintalling the new. Especially when you
will
be tracing dependancies for weeks, unless your a
pretty good programmer, which I am not, and know
the
dependancy chain of the core system. My point was
the
relative ease of upgrading, not the technical
points
of having missing object stubs. Of course you
can't
put a cummins deisel in a pinto without working on
the
frame first.
Shrug. I've had problems trying to recompile the
FreeBSD kernel too.
It happens, I will admit it. I find things like
enabling wpa_supplicant and forgeting device wlan is
what trips me up most, or things along those lines...
dependancies can be frustrating at best... And I have
had experiences where a patch had a few typos in the
commit and nothing works until it is recommitted
correctly. I'm not going to even try to say FreeBSD is
always sunshine and linux is farts. I still like the
fullscreen console on my linux console, vs the tiny
have utilized LCD on my FreeBSD console with my Dell
Inspiron 1100. Know there has to be a fix, but haven't
liked the answers I've read so far...
Of late I was using Gentoo which I found to be
FreeBSD
like with its portage system, until recently
when
it
seems they changed many system level interface
stuff
sometime after April 2006 and now I cannot
seem to
update it.
The developers say you should not leave updating
too
long... True, if you
are running FBSD 5.1 and need to update to 6.1,
5.3
is still there on the
servers, but you do have to go through the steps
of
installing that
intermediate version.
well it was current as of april 8th when I made
the
tape. I went on vacation in May and got back on or
about the 17th of May. Updating HAS NOT WORKED
SINCE
THEN. so if waiting 6 weeks is too long then so be
it.
6 weeks too long? 6 months, *maybe*.
yeah between that tape which was the last update I
recall doing (always TAPE things up before messing
with it, learned that the hard way too many
times) and me getting back home from Tortola to plug
in to the net and update portage and try to update. At
that point I was only updating, and PAM was Blocking.
I deleted it, the update failed at some point I got
sick turned off the box and without PAM could never
log back in. VERY FRUSTRATING, and I actually liked
Gentoo a whole lot. But updating the penguin has never
gone smooth for me in the long run...
I'm not going to constantly be emerging an update on
a
daily basis to stay current, especially since
Openoffice seems to change its release tag
everyother
day on Gentoo and it puts a machine out of
commission
for 8-12 hours to build it. When:
emerge --update --deep --newuse --emptytree world
fails with PAM blocking, mozilla blocking, and now
Xorg blocking as well as some other odds and ends
thats when I say BSD is for me. to me it is
incomprehensible why I cannot rebuild the system
tree
from scratch without software blocking the build.
It
was fun while it lasted, and it was nice to be
away
from winblows but in my experience linux is
slower, a
pain to configure, impossible to update, and a
project
started to emulate Unix. I'd much rather spend my
time
learning Unix, then fighting with the emulator.
That was my point, that BSD was rewritten from the
ground up to avoid ATT
patents. So whilst some might consider BSD real
unix, it's really only
emulating V7 with Berkeley extensions.
BSD was always trying to rewrite the original ATT
code, while being compatible with the
Re: Newbie Experience
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. I'm confused. What compelled you to torture yourself, _then_ complain about it to a list that's sole purpose in existing is to help prevent you from torturing yourself? If you had posted many questions and got no answers, I could understand throwing up your hands. As it stands, you might want to use those hands to smack yourself for making your life more difficult than it needs to be. If you have problems, ask on the list at the time the problem occurs. Complaining after the fact (as you're doing) accomplishes nothing. While I can't speak for the project officially, I would wager to say: 1) We know our installation is not as pretty and easy as others, and 2) We don't care. We are a community. We're not Microsoft. We're not interested in driving users away by saying here's everything you need, don't bother us again. Our limited resources are focused on developing the really important parts of the system. While few would complain if the install process were made easier, nobody has the time to work on it. Become part of the community and ask questions when you have trouble. Find a local user's group. But please, please don't complain about the OS not working right when you use it wrong. The FreeBSD community is an integral part of the OS. Not making use of the FreeBSD community and then complaining that the OS is difficult to use would be like not using a mouse then complaining that MS Windows is hard to use. -- Bill Moran Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. Benjamin Franklin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On 11/09/06, Bill Moran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. I'm confused. What compelled you to torture yourself, _then_ complain about it to a list that's sole purpose in existing is to help prevent you from torturing yourself? If you had posted many questions and got no answers, I could understand throwing up your hands. As it stands, you might want to use those hands to smack yourself for making your life more difficult than it needs to be. If you have problems, ask on the list at the time the problem occurs. Complaining after the fact (as you're doing) accomplishes nothing. While I can't speak for the project officially, I would wager to say: 1) We know our installation is not as pretty and easy as others, and 2) We don't care. We are a community. We're not Microsoft. We're not interested in driving users away by saying here's everything you need, don't bother us again. Our limited resources are focused on developing the really important parts of the system. While few would complain if the install process were made easier, nobody has the time to work on it. Become part of the community and ask questions when you have trouble. Find a local user's group. But please, please don't complain about the OS not working right when you use it wrong. The FreeBSD community is an integral part of the OS. Not making use of the FreeBSD community and then complaining that the OS is difficult to use would be like not using a mouse then complaining that MS Windows is hard to use. -- Bill Moran Well said, Sir. Jeff Rollin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Monday 11 September 2006 05:29, Jeff Rollin wrote: On 11/09/06, Bill Moran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. I'm confused. What compelled you to torture yourself, _then_ complain about it to a list that's sole purpose in existing is to help prevent you from torturing yourself? If you had posted many questions and got no answers, I could understand throwing up your hands. As it stands, you might want to use those hands to smack yourself for making your life more difficult than it needs to be. If you have problems, ask on the list at the time the problem occurs. Complaining after the fact (as you're doing) accomplishes nothing. While I can't speak for the project officially, I would wager to say: 1) We know our installation is not as pretty and easy as others, and 2) We don't care. We are a community. We're not Microsoft. We're not interested in driving users away by saying here's everything you need, don't bother us again. Our limited resources are focused on developing the really important parts of the system. While few would complain if the install process were made easier, nobody has the time to work on it. Become part of the community and ask questions when you have trouble. Find a local user's group. But please, please don't complain about the OS not working right when you use it wrong. The FreeBSD community is an integral part of the OS. Not making use of the FreeBSD community and then complaining that the OS is difficult to use would be like not using a mouse then complaining that MS Windows is hard to use. -- Bill Moran Well said, Sir. truly. indeed it is said, that the fastest way to get the highest quantity of help, is to make a post about how horrible an operating system is, that you spent hours and hours and got nothing done, and that you have already decided that you never want to see [insert OS here] again. myself, as an admin of such a support forum (the unfortunatly now defunct linuxiso.org), i long ago learned to ignore the the ones that we have already lost, and keep my eyes open for the many more that will (usually with minutes) replace them, who are actually there to learn. cheers, jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Newbie Experience #2
Thanks to *all* who responded to my whining -- you've been great, and I am going to give FreeBSD another try. Apologies to all if I sounded like a twit... I was just eager to try something new as I have had it with MS products. Regards, Bob Walker Surveys Forecasts, LLC 2323 North Street Fairfield, CT 06824-1738 T +1.203.255.0505 F +1.203.549.0635 M +1.203.685.8860 www.safllc.com NOTICE: The information in this message is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this email in error, immediately contact the sender and destroy all copies of this email and all other documents included with it. Thank you. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience #2
On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 08:46:13 -0400, Bob Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Thanks to *all* who responded to my whining -- you've been great, and I am going to give FreeBSD another try. Apologies to all if I sounded like a twit... I was just eager to try something new as I have had it with MS products. Regards, Bob Walker Surveys Forecasts, LLC 2323 North Street Fairfield, CT 06824-1738 T +1.203.255.0505 F +1.203.549.0635 M +1.203.685.8860 www.safllc.com Heh, no, you didn't sound like a twit. You're quite correct - everyone who uses FreeBSD knows that a better (meaning, at least to many folks, more simplified and graphical) installer would be nice. But as someone said in response to your original post, the people who currently contribute most heavily to the project are more interested in other areas. Some information about FreeBSD and this mailing list (at least IMHO - I can't and don't speak for the project, nor am I the most informed person on this list by a long shot): - It's a volunteer project. The whole OS and all the little pieces are built (with few exceptions) for love, not money, by people who earn a living working on something else. Given that, the people who do build the OS have put together something of remarkable quality over an extended period. One reason for the state of the installer is that it is considered good enough, and people with limited time would rather spend that time making sure the system almost never breaks, particularly not in mission-critical situations. - World domination is much less on the FreeBSD Project's radar screen than it is for other OSs with monetary (see Microsoft, Apple, etc.) or religious (see Linux, Free Software Foundation, GPL, Richard Stillman, etc.) motivations. So there are only 3 ways to get FreeBSD folks working on a problem that interests you: (1) pay them; (2) learn about programming and do it yourself (at a high enough standard to have your code accepted for inclusion in the OS); or (3) learn enough to be able to show at least one person with relevant programming expertise what an interesting problem this really is. - Many of us remember our own newbie experiences, and if you demonstrate some interest and a willingness to learn, there are plenty of folks on this list who can and will meet you more than halfway. - There's a fair amount of UNIX/*BSD blood flowing in OS X's innards, so if the do-it-yourself aspect gets tiring and you don't mind spending money on an OS, you may want to look at Macs. Interoperability with Windows office apps might be a bit easier to attain going that road. Jud -- I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. - Douglas Adams ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FreeBSD installer (was Re: Newbie Experience #2)
On Monday 11 September 2006 15:56, Jud wrote: everyone who uses FreeBSD knows that a better (meaning, at least to many folks, more simplified and graphical) installer would be nice Perhaps as an option. The problem is that you need to install a graphical environment to run a graphical installer. Simplicity means different things to different people, too. I set up new and replacement servers, using commodity hardware for cost reasons, for our various offices around South Africa. I used to have a KVM switch with a spare monitor and keyboard in my office for doing the installations, or if I was going elsewhere to install delivered hardware or update an existing box, we needed to arrange a spare screen and keyboard at the location. I now have a slightly-adjusted installation CD (I downloaded the disc 1 and 2 ISO images from Freebsd.org, unpacked disc 1 onto a hard drive and edited boot/loader.conf, adding the line console=comconsole then made a new ISO and burned to a fresh CD labelled ``disc 1- serial''). Now the only time my servers get a screen/keyboard connected is to configure the BIOS when they are first unpacked. Otherwise the basic install is done from the serial boot CD with my laptop as a serial terminal, up to the point where I can ssh to the box and start customising, adding packages etc. From my point of view it doesn't get simpler than that. Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD installer (was Re: Newbie Experience #2)
On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:26:33 +0200, Jonathan McKeown [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: On Monday 11 September 2006 15:56, Jud wrote: everyone who uses FreeBSD knows that a better (meaning, at least to many folks, more simplified and graphical) installer would be nice Perhaps as an option. The problem is that you need to install a graphical environment to run a graphical installer. Simplicity means different things to different people, too. [snip] Now the only time my servers get a screen/keyboard connected is to configure the BIOS when they are first unpacked. Otherwise the basic install is done from the serial boot CD with my laptop as a serial terminal, up to the point where I can ssh to the box and start customising, adding packages etc. From my point of view it doesn't get simpler than that. Yes, I meant at least to many folks literally - there are many people for whom a graphical installer would be overcomplication. I personally like the The BSD Installer URL: http://www.bsdinstaller.org/; it just happens to suit the way I install a system in that it makes available most of what I tweak and I don't use most of what it hides. I wish the Summer of Code project to adapt it for FreeBSD installation (URL: http://wikitest.freebsd.org/BSDInstaller were more alive than it appears to be. Jud -- I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. - Douglas Adams ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 05:32:40 -0400
Bill Moran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
We are a community. We're not Microsoft. We're not interested in
driving users away by saying here's everything you need, don't bother
us again. Our limited resources are focused on developing the really
important parts of the system. While few would complain if the
install process were made easier, nobody has the time to work on it.
Become part of the community and ask questions when you have trouble.
Find a local user's group. But please, please don't complain about the
OS not working right when you use it wrong. The FreeBSD community is
an integral part of the OS. Not making use of the FreeBSD community
and then complaining that the OS is difficult to use would be like not
using a mouse then complaining that MS Windows is hard to use.
nicely put Bill :)
I would add, spend some time each day reading the mailing lists and help where
you can, and ask where you can't :)
in light of that... i've read about at least 1 project to improve on our
installer (SOC 2005) - is that already in place in Fbsd 6? (dont think
so...seems pretty similar to the old one to me...)
Any other related projects to improve the installer? I *KNOW* it isn't the most
important part of the system, but every bit counts, and I think that having
both a ncurses and a GUI (non-ncurses ;) )based installer would be quite nice
and modern. And I'd be definitely happy to help where I can. PC-BSD has one,
right?
anyway...just looking for pointers atm...
thanks everyone!
_
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome
What you are afraid to do is a clear indicator of the next thing you need to do.
I speak for myself, not my employer. Contents may be hot. Slippery when wet.
Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
Warned.
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Re: FreeBSD installer (was Re: Newbie Experience #2)
On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 16:26:33 +0200
Jonathan McKeown [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Monday 11 September 2006 15:56, Jud wrote:
everyone who uses FreeBSD knows that a better (meaning,
at least to many folks, more simplified and graphical)
installer would be nice
Perhaps as an option. The problem is that you need to install a graphical
environment to run a graphical installer. Simplicity means different things
to different people, too.
absolutely. but you don't need to install anything to run a graphical
installer. And, ideally, you wouldn't be forced to have only the graphical
installer option, you'd still be able to use the good old ncurses or hack your
own -serial one :)
_
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome
Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to
collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans)
perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand
complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard
to write good code. Eric Raymond
I speak for myself, not my employer. Contents may be hot. Slippery when wet.
Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
Warned.
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Re: Newbie Experience
In response to Norberto Meijome [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Any other related projects to improve the installer? I *KNOW* it isn't the most important part of the system, but every bit counts, and I think that having both a ncurses and a GUI (non-ncurses ;) )based installer would be quite nice and modern. And I'd be definitely happy to help where I can. PC-BSD has one, right? The community _is_ aware of the deficiency. It just hasn't completed an acceptable replacement yet. Probably the best known attempt was libh: http://www.freebsd.org/projects/libh.html The libh project is just waiting around for someone to revitalize it. -- Bill Moran Collaborative Fusion Inc. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 11:42:19PM +0200, Andreas Davour wrote: Too bad you felt it was that horrific. In my experience FreeBSD is sometimes a bit harder than modern Linux distros to install, but are much nicer to maintain and use. I found leaning linux was much harder because there wore no mailing list compaired to the ones FreeBSD has. A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail? Top-posting! -- Alex Please copy the original recipients, otherwise I may not read your reply. Howtos based on my personal use, including information about setting up a firewall and creating traffic graphs with MRTG http://alex.kruijff.org/FreeBSD/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On 2006 Sep 11, Bill Moran wrote: In response to Norberto Meijome [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Any other related projects to improve the installer? I *KNOW* it isn't the most important part of the system, but every bit counts, and I think that having both a ncurses and a GUI (non-ncurses ;) )based installer would be quite nice and modern. And I'd be definitely happy to help where I can. PC-BSD has one, right? The community _is_ aware of the deficiency. It just hasn't completed an acceptable replacement yet. Probably the best known attempt was libh: I'm very happy with the installer as it is. I usually use floppies and then install via ftp, so I'd prefer to keep the installer as small as possible. Maybe even ncurses is not necessary. anton ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD installer (was Re: Newbie Experience #2)
On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 17:51:28 +0200
Alex de Kruijff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
absolutely. but you don't need to install anything to run a graphical
installer. And, ideally, you wouldn't be forced to have only the graphical
installer option, you'd still be able to use the good old ncurses or hack
your own -serial one :)
But then two versions of a installer have to be maintained, meaning more
work. Everyone can use the ncurses version. Its seems to me that the
time it takes to make a second version could better go in to other
parts of FreeBSD.
not if both read the same config and display it in a different manner, very
much like the Linux kernel's make config / menuconfig / xconfig
_
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will
deserve neither and lose both. Benjamin Franklin
I speak for myself, not my employer. Contents may be hot. Slippery when wet.
Reading disclaimers makes you go blind. Writing them is worse. You have been
Warned.
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Re: Newbie Experience
In response to Anton Shterenlikht [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On 2006 Sep 11, Bill Moran wrote: In response to Norberto Meijome [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Any other related projects to improve the installer? I *KNOW* it isn't the most important part of the system, but every bit counts, and I think that having both a ncurses and a GUI (non-ncurses ;) )based installer would be quite nice and modern. And I'd be definitely happy to help where I can. PC-BSD has one, right? The community _is_ aware of the deficiency. It just hasn't completed an acceptable replacement yet. Probably the best known attempt was libh: I'm very happy with the installer as it is. I usually use floppies and then install via ftp, so I'd prefer to keep the installer as small as possible. Maybe even ncurses is not necessary. One of the goals of libh was to build a library that could display in a number of different ways: i.e. graphical or curses. It's possible that libh stalled because their goals were too lofty ... -- Bill Moran Collaborative Fusion Inc. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
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. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
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]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote: Discussions like these leave me lost for words... Perhaps, although it seems you recovered quickly. :-) Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I really don't see what the problem is with sysinstall. Credits: It's highly functional. It can configure a lot of things about a FreeBSD system, either during or after the installation of the system. It's CLI/remote-serial-console friendly. Debits: It's oriented towards technical people. People who don't understand computers well in general, and the details of disk layouts in particular, tend to get hopelessly confused. Not only do they usually not know how to access the help inside sysinstall, many times the help text is not available, or is not comprehensible unless you have the already-mentioned technical background. Fortunately, the outstanding docs available for FreeBSD do a lot to walk people through the process, even novices. Unfortunately, people want to use computers without having to read the docs. Just ask your mom/grandparents/etc. :-) 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... Why would you think that? I'd imagine that most of the people using FreeBSD end up having a Linux box or two around for one reason or another. As for YaST, well, whatever gets the job done. It reminds me a bit too much of SMIT from AIX, or perhaps cPanel or Webmin, but other people seem to prefer such interfaces to a CLI prompt. -- -Chuck ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
From: Alex de Kruijff [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 11:42:19PM +0200, Andreas Davour wrote:
Too bad you felt it was that horrific.
In my experience FreeBSD is sometimes a bit harder than modern Linux
distros to install, but are much nicer to maintain and use.
I found leaning linux was much harder because there wore no mailing list
compaired to the ones FreeBSD has.
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
Top-posting!
You must HATE blogs.
{^_-}
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Re: Newbie Experience
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. When I first installed FreeBSD, circa 2003, version 4.9, the two reasons I chose it over Redhat and Debian were the simplicity of the installation and good manual. The install process on REdhat and Debian was awkward, at least for me, and I could not make them work on my old compaq armada laptop. In contrast just following the manual and choosing default install parameters I got Freebsd working fast. During the installation I actually learned a lot about unix and Freebsd, the sort of details which are important to know anyway. It is hard to find the right balance between simplicity and functionality. It seems the balance in the Freebsd install is about right. anton ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
On Monday 11 September 2006 2:12 pm, Anton Shterenlikht wrote: 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. When I first installed FreeBSD, circa 2003, version 4.9, the two reasons I chose it over Redhat and Debian were the simplicity of the installation and good manual. The install process on REdhat and Debian was awkward, at least for me, and I could not make them work on my old compaq armada laptop. In contrast just following the manual and choosing default install parameters I got Freebsd working fast. During the installation I actually learned a lot about unix and Freebsd, the sort of details which are important to know anyway. It is hard to find the right balance between simplicity and functionality. It seems the balance in the Freebsd install is about right. anton ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] I think that for people who have never seen FreeBSD before, PC-BSD or DesktopBSD are good choices for starting points. Most of the install choices are made for you. Later if someone wants to do a custom install, they will have more familiarity with the choices or have a good FreeBSD book like FreeBSD 6 Unleashed which can help sort out the problems. Ralph Ellis ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
--- Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote: Discussions like these leave me lost for words... Perhaps, although it seems you recovered quickly. :-) Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I really don't see what the problem is with sysinstall. I'm in that club myself. It takes a few times to get it down, but it is simple once you know the basic steps of getting FreeBSD on a box. The trick is of course understanding the basic steps which is where most don't take the time to research. I know I read through tha handbook a few times before I attempted my first go, and I know I messed up royally even still. But now its more frustrating to figure out what I want to do while the packages are downloading then anything else. Credits: It's highly functional. It can configure a lot of things about a FreeBSD system, either during or after the installation of the system. It's CLI/remote-serial-console friendly. Debits: It's oriented towards technical people. People who don't understand computers well in general, and the details of disk layouts in particular, tend to get hopelessly confused. Not only do they usually not know how to access the help inside sysinstall, many times the help text is not available, or is not comprehensible unless you have the already-mentioned technical background. I would have to concurr with this 100%. My first go at FreeBSD was a little rough do to this whole concept of two partitionings. I thought to myself now why would anyone want to do this. I wouldn't consider myself at the time a novice, but I wouldn't consider myself too bright either... Now it makes perfect sense to have one partition and multiple slices. It makes an fstab look a lot nicer. nothing more annoying then not having say a linux box boot because you selected the extended partitions number instead of the logical drive contained therein... and keeping track of a million partitions get old quick. Fortunately, the outstanding docs available for FreeBSD do a lot to walk people through the process, even novices. Unfortunately, people want to use computers without having to read the docs. Just ask your mom/grandparents/etc. :-) most people want to use everything without reading the manual. I think thats why there's labels on the toaster not to stick a fork in it, or a tag to not use a hair dryer in the shower... Personally I turn to the Cadillac shop manual when I want to tune up my eldo, it makes sense to me. I know software is the same way, but most people don't want to take any time figuring out what their doing; pardon my vulgarity but Taco Bell exists for a reason, man pages... 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... Why would you think that? I'd imagine that most of the people using FreeBSD end up having a Linux box or two around for one reason or another. I find it was for not reading the FreeBSD manuals... if people think FreeBSD is hard I cannot imagine what they think about Linux. Sure it has that flashy install program, well except Gentoo and maybe a few others, but upgrading the kernel can make setting up a FreeBSD box from scratch WITHOUT the manuals seem like a cake walk... I will admit to having a linux partition on my laptop, but only because I haven't taken the time to backup FreeBSD and give myself 15 more gigs... I will give Linux this, if I were building an embedded system I would probably go with Linux, but only because the obscure hardware sometimes in PC104s has vendor supported linux drivers. That and I understand how Linux boots better then FreeBSD, I'm hoping this will change soon; even have a Treo 650 lying around with X windows name all over it... might have to try OpenBSD for that one though... -brian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
--- Anton Shterenlikht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. When I first installed FreeBSD, circa 2003, version 4.9, the two reasons I chose it over Redhat and Debian were the simplicity of the installation and good manual. The install process on REdhat and Debian was awkward, at least for me, and I could not make them work on my old compaq armada laptop. In contrast just following the manual and choosing default install parameters I got Freebsd working fast. During the installation I actually learned a lot about unix and Freebsd, the sort of details which are important to know anyway. It is hard to find the right balance between simplicity and functionality. It seems the balance in the Freebsd install is about right. anton I've only been around since FreeBSD 5.4 myself, and found during installs that sysinstall would get confused if you changed your mind and went backwards through the menus to reconfigure options. it seems like the one in 6.1 is a lot better, but maybe I just move back and forth less... That being said once it is installed it is a million times easier to maintain and upgrade then any Linux I've used. I had an old Digital 486 I had to install Redhat 7.3 thinking I could easily update to the latest kernel. I found I had to go through so many dependancies to do so I finally said whatever kernel was there was good enough. Talk about having to be a GNU guru to get things installed correctly without clobbering the old stuff and running into trouble... Of late I was using Gentoo which I found to be FreeBSD like with its portage system, until recently when it seems they changed many system level interface stuff sometime after April 2006 and now I cannot seem to update it. Even a full system rebuild has blocking packages that boggle my mind as they were compile from source originally... sysinstall isn't all that bad. It could be flashier, it could be graphical, it could be a lot of things. If it really bothers you that much you can make yourself a livecd system that brings up X and restores a basic install, or cvsups whatever system you want on your pc/sparc/whatever and builds it from source. that is the beauty of Unix. True Unix not an emulator like Linux. That and the fact you get an OS with a set of base software and a compiler out of the box. Linux is only the kernel, you have to make hundreds of independant software packages work together to get a system running. Each one with their own independant configuration files, and hundreds of man pages to read. Even the rc.d system is a separate package. now I'm sure things have progressed with Fedora Core where updating is nice and simple, but the shear amount of chaos that is Linux just drives me nutz. Sysinstall does take a few installs to get down pat, but once you do it can be setup almost in your sleep. You do need to get used to the differences of Unix vs most PC OSs whereby you need to in laymens term partition twice. A feature I love because it keeps fstab making sense. Like anything you can't expect to try something completely new without expecting to fall on your face a few times. I wouldn't just through on scuba gear and dive the Atlantic Ocean in search of the Titanic... I would expect to have to read, maybe take some classes (mess up FreeBSD bad and start over) and try in a pool instead of the ocean a few times (use non-mission critical machines to learn with) The unfortunate truth is Unix is not Microsoft Windows, well some might consider it unfortunate... Windows tells you what to do, what software you must use, what drivers you must use, where you must install things, what daemons listen to what ports and their is little you can do to change it. Unix is just a set of simple commands strung together in scripts and pipes that can do whatever you want it to do. X11 is not Unix it is a software package designed to allow netrocentric GUI applications to talk to a screen, keyboard and mouse. Its a monster in and of itself... Complete with its own documentation...
Re: Newbie Experience
backyard writes: --- Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote: Discussions like these leave me lost for words... Perhaps, although it seems you recovered quickly. :-) Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I really don't see what the problem is with sysinstall. I'm in that club myself. It takes a few times to get it down, but it is simple once you know the basic steps of getting FreeBSD on a box. The trick is of some excised comprehensible unless you have the already-mentioned technical background. I would have to concurr with this 100%. My first go at FreeBSD was a little rough do to this whole concept of two partitionings. I thought to myself now why would anyone want to do this. I wouldn't consider myself at the time a novice, but I wouldn't consider myself too bright either... Now it makes perfect sense to have one partition and multiple slices. It makes an fstab look a lot nicer. Of course, I think you just said that backwards. I think by FreeBSD terminology you probably mean one slice and several partitions (a-h) in it... jerry nothing more annoying then not having say a linux box boot because you selected the extended partitions number instead of the logical drive contained therein... and keeping track of a million partitions get old quick. -brian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
--- Jerold McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: backyard writes: --- Chuck Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote: Discussions like these leave me lost for words... Perhaps, although it seems you recovered quickly. :-) Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I really don't see what the problem is with sysinstall. I'm in that club myself. It takes a few times to get it down, but it is simple once you know the basic steps of getting FreeBSD on a box. The trick is of some excised comprehensible unless you have the already-mentioned technical background. I would have to concurr with this 100%. My first go at FreeBSD was a little rough do to this whole concept of two partitionings. I thought to myself now why would anyone want to do this. I wouldn't consider myself at the time a novice, but I wouldn't consider myself too bright either... Now it makes perfect sense to have one partition and multiple slices. It makes an fstab look a lot nicer. Of course, I think you just said that backwards. I think by FreeBSD terminology you probably mean one slice and several partitions (a-h) in it... in the interest of not confusing a newbie in the future I would say yes I did. my biggest problem is mixing my own vernacular with what the rest of the world uses... At any rate having one slice for my Unix and partitioning that slice up with the filesystems I wish to populate is a good thing. After a while you even get used to what a-h is all about and to stay away from c unless you need to dd a mistaken gvinum configuration away... In retrospec this probably messes new folks up cause like myself they generally assume a partition is what we would call a slice... -brian jerry nothing more annoying then not having say a linux box boot because you selected the extended partitions number instead of the logical drive contained therein... and keeping track of a million partitions get old quick. -brian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Newbie Experience
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, Bob Walker Surveys Forecasts, LLC 2323 North Street Fairfield, CT 06824-1738 T +1.203.255.0505 F +1.203.549.0635 M +1.203.685.8860 www.safllc.com NOTICE: The information in this message is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this email in error, immediately contact the sender and destroy all copies of this email and all other documents included with it. Thank you. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
You are correct that FreeBSD is closer with roots to UNIX. You would have done better to post here first and get some pointers on installation. The basic install is usually easy on supported hardware. X and and GUI like gnome, kde, etc are NOT part of the OS. Unlike other OS's there is no GUI tied to FreeBSD. So most X window managers will work. But you should have done a little more research on X and whether your hardware is supported. A couple of the best parts of FreeBSD is the rich ports collection, support for even running the OS on dated hardware, and the flexibility of the OS. -Derek At 04:29 PM 9/10/2006, Bob Walker 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, Bob Walker Surveys Forecasts, LLC 2323 North Street Fairfield, CT 06824-1738 T +1.203.255.0505 F +1.203.549.0635 M +1.203.685.8860 www.safllc.com NOTICE: The information in this message is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this email in error, immediately contact the sender and destroy all copies of this email and all other documents included with it. Thank you. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Newbie Experience
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. The Handbook is excellent at walking through much of the setup. Although, in cases similar to yours I always recommend starting with the article designed for people new to both FreeBSD and Unix. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/new-users/index.html This gets you started on all the basics you'll need to know to get everything else under control and is short enough that you don't feel compelled to jump around and possibly miss stuff. It doesn't cover X setup but gets you comfortable working in the command line which is what you're going to need to be proficient at until you have X configured. X is usually fairly easy to setup but you need to know how to move around. 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, FreeBSD has an excellent out of the box experience, for the majority of people who use it. The best out of the box experience (for most BSD users) is a base system which is configured to be used well enough to set it up for whatever use you intend for it. Even moving to it completely new, it's not bad if you take the time to learn it. Moving to a different OS isn't something you should take lightly. There's a reason people are encouraged to read all the documentation they can before starting. With that said, the installation does require administrative ability. But since it's your machine, you will eventually need that. Huge learning curve right at the front but it's very gentle after that. My step-mother (who can't manage to understand why programs people send her don't run -- yes they're windows viruses -- and only knows her web-browser because it's the globe icon) manages to use FreeBSD without issue. She absolutely loves it and does everything you listed as simple requirements and more. But I set it up for her because she wasn't up for the learning curve. If you're of modest-technical ability and have a desire to learn the OS, it's not very difficult to overcome that curve. But the curve does exist. Anyway, when you're stuck, posting specific questions about your problems here (or trying google) is usually a lot more productive than giving up and sending an email about how it doesn't work to the help list. -Kevin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
