freebsd GUI

Hi im brand new to free bsd though i have considerable experience with windows + linux. I managed to install the 4.8 stable version from the cd no prob. It boots up no prob, i login no problem but it leaves me at the command prompt (if thats wat u call it - im up for correction) Basicaly i need someone to tell me how to get it to boot a gui like Gnome or KDE. I installed the relevant packages but am stuck now. All help appreciated. Thanx!

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.IS...ndbook/x11.html

FreeBSD handbook is always useful.

I don't use either, so I'm not sure how you'd do it, but I think you start kde from the command prompt with the command startkde. You can even get a graphical logon prompt by modifying your /etc/rc.conf (I think). Might be in the kde man pages, if there are any. Or, it might be in the kde or gnome Web sites. I think there might be something here on DevShed, but I can't be too sure about that.

Regards.

if you haven't already, you need to go into post install and configure x-windows and select your desktop of choice, whether it be KDE, Gnome, etc.

Then at the command prompt type: "start x" (minus the quotes of course) and it should boot into X and your selected desktop.

startkde should work too.

>> Then at the command prompt type: "start x" (minus the quotes of course) and it should boot into X and your selected desktop.
I think you mean "startx" (minus quotes, no spaces)

yep that i did...

I just now started using FreeBSD 5.0 as a desktop/workstation. I had some issues getting my video card and mouse to work correctly until I found the "Auto" dectect setting for the mouse. Now everything works like a champ.

Since your question was answered by the first response, I'm going off-topic.

kfickert

How do you like 5? I've been using 4.8 as my regular machine for several months now and I've been thinking of upgrading. But I've read through the release notes and everything and they basically recommend a complete wipe of 4.8 and install of 5.0. So I'm wondering if you've found anything extra special that you think would make it worth the work to get up to 5.

jharnois, maybe you should start a new thread about this, so that people who search here will see an appropriate thread. I notice that the question was really addressed to kfickert, but if you don't mind, I'll like to toss in my 2 cents about FreeBSD 5.x series. My first try (about 2 months ago) wasn't very pleasant. Basically, I had a box which had FreeBSD 4.8 running perfectly on it and I decided to blow the contents away and install 5.x. Trouble was that the CD panicked at the second stage of booting and simply refused to boot. I googled and found quite a few posts reporting the same error message. It seems that the boot loader has changed between 4.x and 5.x and the new boot loader didn't work for my computer.

My next machine went much better -- this was a rackmount that my co-worker brought into the office, because it kept dying at the co-lo for no reason and he suspected some faulty hardware. While he was waiting for the new hardware to come over, I decided to give 5.1 a try on it -- Install went smoothly with no hitches at all. Since this was a production machine, I didn't install X on it, so I don't really know how the config for X has changed from 4.x (i.e. the mouse and video card stuff that kfickert mentioned above). The first problem I hit was when I tried to build a custom kernel --- we have a lot of similar computers and so, over time, we had developed a couple of config files that we use to build custom kernels for all the computers. Trouble was that the file that had worked unchanged for all versions of 4.x (all the way from 4.2!) didn't work with 5.1 -- the make depend part failed. So, I took a look at 5.1's GENERIC and noticed a few differences from the 4.x series, that made our custom file fail. So, I copied the 5.x GENERIC file and pruned it to make it similar to the custom file and the kernel build went fine. FWIW, I ran that computer for a couple of days until the new hardware came over. The kernel panicked twice on my custom kernel, and later googling showed that this may be a known bug when you have SMP enabled (with some specific options). The default GENERIC kernel ran great though for 2 days .

The big question -- would I switch to it. For my home play box -- sure, if I could only get the boot loader to work right. For production -- I would play around with it some more, before I jump into it. Right now, we're running just fine with 4.x kernels, so there's no overwhelming need for us to switch right away. Your needs may be different from ours, so don't take my comments as good advice. Just my 2 cents .

Noted. I obviously wasn't thinking clearly. I've taken the advice and started a new thread.

http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...&threadid=88237