Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:43:25 -0400 From: Anish Mistry <mistry.7@osu.edu> To: Peter Leftwich <Hostmaster@Video2Video.Com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Peter heads back to M$FT WinBloze [freebsd as viable desktop] Message-ID: <200207271243.25351.mistry.7@osu.edu> In-Reply-To: <20020726195011.N18019-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> References: <20020726195011.N18019-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net>
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On Friday 26 July 2002 08:06 pm, Peter Leftwich wrote: > Dear List, I've been reading some compelling posts lately about people > giving up on FreeBSD, and may soon -- sadly -- join their ranks! > > (There was the guy who posted about FreeBSD being great for servers > (surely) but falling short in the desktop/workstation/laptop AND > ease-of-use category. Now there's the thread about Dan wanting his xp > back. I can relate!) > > I gave up on Win98 SR1 (1 38gb partition on a 40gb HD) back in Feb 2002 > when I installed a Firewire card and Windows got super flakey on me. > Didn't like me for that move. I'd often abuse IE (browser) for hours until > it brought the stupid 16bit DOS-based OS down with it. Well, after > deciding "that's it" and some PartitionMagic four-ways, I blew the dust off > my FreeBSD 4.3 CDROMs and installed them by the seat of my pants, but could > never get XFree86 3.3.6 working - blank screen! > > Well at some point recently I ran `boot0cfg /dev/ad0s2` which wiped my MBR > completely (I just wanted to boot straight into FreeBSD but still keep the > DOS slice around as mountable). So now I'm on an old 8.4gb HD that I > booted to absolutely $FREE$ :) floppies and put 4.6 onto, however, XFree86 > 4.2.0 now suddenly works as does KDE and a very "krashy" Konqueror browser (sigh). > > Realizing that plugins are impossible (Flash), and the hassle of getting > sound players working and my Canon scanner and webcam and PDF readers and > *.DOC readers, I think I may be out of the FreeBSD workstation game. > > Finally going from UNIX user (since 1992) to sysadmin was a terrific > learning experience, but a "learning XP" seems more attractive for now > especially as XP is built on (sort of) NT and is 32bit and uses protected > memory ... until FreeBSD is 34,523,455% more of an OUT-OF-THE-BOX-GUI OS. :( > > Comments? Admonitions? Saving graces? > > -- > Peter Leftwich > President & Founder > Video2Video Services > Box 13692, La Jolla, CA, 92039 USA > +1-413-403-9555 > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > I thought that I'd bite on this thread since there have been quite a lot of negative post on getting FreeBSD to work as a working and productive desktop. My experience has been rocky, but about 3 months ago I was finally able to have nice desktop system setup using FreeBSD. My config: 650 Mhz AMD Duron VIA KT133A Motherboard Geforce MX 2 64MB 52X cdrom (generic) 3.5" floppy Onboard Audio Asante Friendly Net Etherfast 10/100 NIC ATI TV Wonder VE Handspring Visor Platinum USB ----- Applicable Software: X-Server 4.2 FXTV - for tv card pilot-link - visor * OpenOffice 1.0 (linux) AIM 1.5234 (linux) Mozilla 1.0 w/ shockwave/flash/java/realplayer (linux) KDE 3.0 KMail Gabber Wine QuickTime 6 (wine) mplayer - play just about any video mencoder - tv card recording avidemux - divx editing * xmbmon gkrellm linux_base 7.1 xchat xmms realplayer There are probably more but these are the most used. ----- The items with a * are ones which I had to modify the code to get working on FreeBSD, which for me wasn't a problem since I'm a coder, but also I do the same thing in windows, if I don't like something or want to fix it I code a solution, ie. I created my own windows shell (on my website) since I got fed up with explorer, but anyway I understand that most people don't do this. The only thing that I can't do in FreeBSD is play games, which I don't play many and there are no accellerated nvidia drivers for my card. One thing I've noticed it that linux emulation is underused, that is the only way to get a lot of the mozilla plugins or OpenOffice to work easily. I have been able to get all my hardware to work, and as long as I'm not doing and windows programming or want to play Age of Kings, I stay in FreeBSD. If anyone wants instructions on getting any of the above applications working on FreeBSD I'd be glad to help. Good luck to all those trying to get FreeBSD as a workstation. -- Anish Mistry amistry@am-productions.yi.org AM Productions http://am-productions.yi.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the messagehelp
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