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! >=20 > (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!) >=20 > 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 u= ntil > 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 c= ould > never get XFree86 3.3.6 working - blank screen! >=20 > 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, XFre= e86 > 4.2.0 now suddenly works as does KDE and a very "krashy" Konqueror brow= ser=20 (sigh). >=20 > Realizing that plugins are impossible (Flash), and the hassle of gettin= g > sound players working and my Canon scanner and webcam and PDF readers a= nd > *.DOC readers, I think I may be out of the FreeBSD workstation game. >=20 > 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 protect= ed > memory ... until FreeBSD is 34,523,455% more of an OUT-OF-THE-BOX-GUI O= S. :( >=20 > Comments? Admonitions? Saving graces? >=20 > -- > Peter Leftwich > President & Founder > Video2Video Services > Box 13692, La Jolla, CA, 92039 USA > +1-413-403-9555 >=20 >=20 > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message >=20 >=20 I thought that I'd bite on this thread since there have been quite a lot = of=20 negative post on getting FreeBSD to work as a working and productive desk= top. =20 My experience has been rocky, but about 3 months ago I was finally able t= o=20 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=20 FreeBSD, which for me wasn't a problem since I'm a coder, but also I do t= he=20 same thing in windows, if I don't like something or want to fix it I code= a=20 solution, ie. I created my own windows shell (on my website) since I got = fed=20 up with explorer, but anyway I understand that most people don't do this.= =20 The only thing that I can't do in FreeBSD is play games, which I don't pl= ay=20 many and there are no accellerated nvidia drivers for my card. One thing= =20 I've noticed it that linux emulation is underused, that is the only way t= o=20 get a lot of the mozilla plugins or OpenOffice to work easily. I have be= en=20 able to get all my hardware to work, and as long as I'm not doing and win= dows=20 programming or want to play Age of Kings, I stay in FreeBSD. If anyone wants instructions on getting any of the above applications wor= king=20 on FreeBSD I'd be glad to help. Good luck to all those trying to get FreeBSD as a workstation. --=20 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 message
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