Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 15:17:50 -0400 From: Xn Nooby <xnooby@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: The Perfect Desktop: FreebSD 8.2 in Virtualbox 4? Message-ID: <BANLkTi=KWMY9nMeH2G8B8nc5Z9qqVUw08g@mail.gmail.com>
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HowtoForge has a lot of good examples of how to install and configure a desktop system using various Linux distributions, but there are none on how to create a FreeBSD desktop. Would someone will be willing to put one together? I envision this more of a how-to than just providing an "appliance". The goal would be to show how to configure the system on a hardware-neutral platform (Virtualbox VM), so that people could use it as an example for setting up their own systems. I suspect a lot of people would use this guide for setting up a laptop, so an underpowered VM would be a good proxy. Some parameters for the guide could be: - uses 8.2 installer - tracks errata branch with FreeBSD update - tracks 8-stable branch for ports - builds from source minimally (laptops are slow!) - demonstrates how to install many desktop apps - uses a lightweight VM, icewm or openbox ? - optionally uses a heavyweight WM, Gnome3 ? - ideally demonstrates "best practices" - looks good, with nice fonts - optionally supports openGL (desktop users would need that) - optionally includes tips for upgrading to 8.3+ Here is the page for Debian Lenny as an example: http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-debian-lenny I know the Handbook has everything it it, but I am looking for something that can leverage the fact that in a VM the hardware is known in advance. The instructions could then be very direct, and would not have to cover all possible situations. They would simply be "do exactly these commands". Admittedly I am asking for what I need, but there might be others who could benefit. I have been trying to make a script to do these automatically, but I am still having problems understanding certain things. I could help some, by testing, and I can write an install script to automate anything that I can understand.
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