Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 20:02:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Donald Burr <dburr@POBoxes.com> To: DrAcO <XDrAcOX@mci2000.COM> Cc: newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Installing X-Windows Message-ID: <XFMail.980612200212.dburr@POBoxes.com> In-Reply-To: <3581B36E.C76B5891@mci2000.COM>
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My secret spy satellite informs me that on 12-Jun-98, DrAcO wrote:
> I am new to the FreeBSD "enviroment", and am only 15 at the time so
> forgive me if I sound kind of "out of it" right now. I recently
> installed FreeBSD 2.2.6 on my laptop (Toshiba 430CDS) and am having
> trouble running X-Windows. When X-Windows comes up, it seems like an
> older version. When I ran RedHat Linux 4.2, my X-Windows background was
> green and it had a start menu, etc., etc. However, my FreeBSD X-Windows
> is grey, has no start menu, and the colors are different. The X-Term
> windows is actually white! In X-Windows configuration, I have selected
> the right graphics card, screen resolution, and everything is correct,
> but when I startx it looks the same. I installed FreeBSD from a
> CD-ROM. I was wondering if someone could help me figure out what the
> problem is?
The problem's not with FreeBSD: the problem is that RedHat Linux did way
too much for you.
You see, RedHat comes with its own special set of custom window
environments, called TheNextLevel. But FreeBSD doesn't -- it just comes
with the "default" window manager, called TWM, which, as you've seen, is
rather primitive.
But the good news is, there is a solution!! FreeBSD comes with many
alternate window managers in the ports collection. These can easily be
installed in place of the default, with only a few fairly easy commands.
Here are some particular favorites of mine:
* KDE -- this is my favorite, and the one I use daily.
/usr/ports/x11/kde
* AfterStep -- a lot of people like this. It's a NeXTstep look-alike.
(NeXTstep is the windowing system used on the NeXT workstation)
/usr/ports/x11/afterstep
* WindowMaker -- another NeXTstep clone. Has its own devoted following.
/usr/ports/x11/windowmaker
* Enlightenement -- not a clone of anything, but a really cool looking WM.
It, too, has its own set of devoted followers.
/usr/ports/x11/enlightenment
The probem that you mentioned is, unfortunately, a very well-known
deficiency in FreeBSD. But it's
one that we're trying to fix! For example, as mentioned earlier, we have
tons of window managers/environments available in hte ports collection.
But, We are also sponsoring a contest for people to actually DESIGN a
windowing environment/theme that's appropriate to FreeBSD. We hope to be
able to distribute the "winner" as the "default" windowing theme (or, an
easily installable "alternate default"). Please see
http://www.freebsd.org/~jkh/xcontest/ for more details.
---
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