I finished installing this yesterday, as I wanted to set up a BSD box to mess with, and after deciding on letting go on a Linux partition...Which wasn't easy because I really liked it...But the only other boxes available were both in use and needed for testing, I decided to let it be and go for it.
I looked around my software collections (Yes, Plural, I keep Windows and Windows software in two spots depending on what it is, as in OS or apps.. and then Linux and Linux tools on CD in two other locations, and then Solaris and Solaris Software in another and all my BSD stuff is in two spots).
I noticed that I couldn't find my 7.0 CDs, and the only complete set I could find for some reason was 6.0. I didn't want to use one that old now that 7 was out, so I just downloaded the 3 CD set. It really only took about half an hour before I could start installing the first CD so no big deal.
Anyway, the installer is still the same as it was in 6.0 so no having to learn a new install script like when I first installed one of the 5.X series and saw they had changed it a bit.
The install was pretty fast, and the machine it's on has TWO HDs. One is the 80 GB drive it came with, wich has my Windows XP install on that so I can play Doom.
The other HD is about 160 GBs and had Linux, so I chose that one and dedicated the whole disk for BSD.
Once it was finished, I gave it the OK to use the FreeBSD boot manager since grub obviously wouldn't work after this, and then made a small mistake. It kind of caught me off gaurd.
I was doing partitions and giving BSD the whole disk, and right after I delected the drive again by accident, so I expected the screen to show up again and ask where to install to, but I had forgotten I had already set this up a screen earlier. So I ended up installing the boot loader on BOTH HDs.
At first I was like "Ah ****"... But then I realised if I take that drive out, or the first drive decided to go, I wouldn't need to do much and could just set the other drive with BSD on it as the master and not have to screw with it more than that as it would already contain a loader.
The only real difference now is that when I boot, if I don't choose Windows, I have to select to boot from the other drive, then select BSD from THAT loader's menu.
In other words not only is it no big deal, it makes dealing with a disk failure easier.
So, how is it?
Well, the system is fast. I've had it running since the installer finished. I have KDe loaded right now but I first messed with Window Maker, FVWM2, and others to get a feel for it.
I will point out I still haven't configured X yet. The video card in the machine is a POS crappy on board card that sucks. 32 MBs you can only really use in Windows, and even then it blows.
The sound card is the same.
However, I didn't have to configure X, I just loaded up the OS, logged in as root, and typed GDM and then went from there.
Then I wanted to play with KDM, so I killed off GDM and typed this:
kdm
Then that loaded for me and I logged in again noting the small differences in a non Linux vendor configured specialty look that I'm used to. The defaults look nice though.
After loading KDE, I wanted to see if the adage I've dealt with for about 7 years now would be true.
I've had a love hate relationship with FreeBSD since about 2000 to 2001. I could install it very easy without reading the installation help. I could set it up and have the thing online without much info or needing to hack anything.
I could NEVER get sound working. I guess the idea of having to play with a Kernel just for sound because it's off by default annoyed me.
Well, this was no different there. But I had to try because the speakers hooked up to this box can shake the house next door and I like that.
(We've had two neighboor's in and out in the last year).
I checked the FreeBSD docs page instead of searching through my FreeBSD book collection which I might add is quite impressive.
I found a page here:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...und-setup.html
I follored that and did the generic one of kldl snd_driver and.... IT WORKED!
I actually got sound to work.... For the first time ever. I saw my POS sound card in dmsg output, grabbed an MP3 from my Slackware FTP server, and as root did this:
pkg_add -r mpg123
It grabbed it and installed it and I used it to play a song, and it actually worked!
By the way, the ability to type this:
pkg_add -r AnyPackage
And have it not only grab packages and software, install it, and be done, is awesome. It's something I've always liked.
Anyway, so far, in my day of using it, I'm actually impressed.
I like the fact that this one seems to have some decent speed going, and of course, the fact that I actually got sound working good.
I guess all along I should have installed it on this machine. I have.... about 9 Desktops here, and I've installed FreeBSD on most of them, and never gotten sound to work properly. I try ONCE on here with this new release and it works the first time.
I still haven't loaded it into the Kernel, because, well, I'm screwing around with other stuff, but at least it works! The installationonly took like 20 minutes or so, and I did a fairly custom install too.
After I have the Kernel loaded with Sound Support, I won't have to type this command whenever I boot it, but really, let's be honest here. It's not like FreeBSD needs to reboot a whole lot heh.
Oh, one more thing before I go:
For the newbies of UNIX / Linux / BSD in general:
If you decide to install this or a distro of Linux, PLEASE, PLEASE, do NOT come on here asking why some obscure command someone told you you had to do to get networking working isn't working.
A few years ago my inbox used to get loaded up with people askign why they couldn't configure sound or X and the general reason was, THEY THOUGHT THEY ACTUALLY HAD TO TO MAKE IT WORK... I told them to reinstall, NOT configure, and just load it up out of the box, and boom, it worked. You don't have to configure everything by hand anymore. It isn't 1992. Most hardware works right out of the box on here.
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Originally Posted by gore
