# xorg install taking its time



## esper (Jun 29, 2018)

Hi!

I'm new here, so I'm not sure where/if there is a place for questions, so I'm posting this here in hope that I'm doing in right.

Here's the problem,
2 days ago, I downloaded and installed FreeBSD 11.1 on a VirtualBox VM, that same day, I followed a tutorial ( here https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/freebsd/how-to-guides/installing-a-desktop-environment-on-freebsd/ ) on installing a desktop environment, I got to the step where you are instructed to:

```
cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg
make install clean
```
And this is where my problem starts, the making of xorg has taken an estimate of 12 hours (so far) and at the time of writing this, still hasn't completed the make.
I tried adding -DBATCH to the command but 5 hours later it's still making.

This has nothing to do with my internet connection, back when I installed skyrim on steam (about 9 gigs (I think)) my connection still managed to do this in less than 4 hours.


Is this a common issue? Or is this just me following an obsolete tutorial? Or is is possibly meant to take this long?
Any help is appreciated!


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## ekingston (Jun 29, 2018)

Are you aware of the pre-compiled packages available in freebsd though the pkg command?

`pkg update` updates your local copy of the list of pre-compiled packages
`pkg search` "string" lets you search it for specific text
`pkg fetch` "package name" downloads the binary package
`pkg install` "package name" installed (and downloads if needed) the package

Do note, you can end up with a lot of issues if you mix Ports (your system compiles) and Packages (pre-complied). Although the packages are generated from the ports system, the ports system gets updated much more frequently than the packaged binaries so you quickly get out-of-sync which can be problematic with dependencies.


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## esper (Jun 29, 2018)

ekingston said:


> Are you aware of the pre-compiled packages available in freebsd though the pkg command?
> 
> *pkg update* updates your local copy of the list of pre-compiled packages
> *pkg search* "string" lets you search it for specific text
> ...


It appears that i was misinterpreted the steps to take on the site, thanks


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## ShelLuser (Jun 29, 2018)

Basically FreeBSD has 2 ways of installing software. The Ports collection, residing in /usr/ports which allows you to build the software yourself. As you noticed yourself that can take up its sweet time, especially when you're dealing with huge projects such as Xorg, LibreOffice or even OpenJDK8 to name but a few.

The other option... as ekingston also mentioned, is using binary packages.

If you take that route do keep in mind that FreeBSD knows 2 kinds of repositories: quarterly and latest. See also /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf.

If you already installed some ports then you might want to undo that and resort to packages entirely. To do that just use this command: `# pkg upgrade -f`. This will reinstall and/or upgrade _all_ your currently installed packages, thus effectively undoing any port installations.

Hope this can help too!


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## Minbari (Jun 29, 2018)

esper said:


> And this is where my problem starts, the making of xorg has taken an estimate of 12 hours (so far) and at the time of writing this, still hasn't completed the make.
> I tried adding -DBATCH to the command but 5 hours later it's still making.


If you try to build Xorg from ports on an Atom CPU or Core2 Duo of courses it will take 12 hours or more. I've just builded Xorg yesterday and it took me less than 30 minutes on an i7 processor. The most time spend by my machine to build a port it's for llvm which take 1.5-2 hours.
In conclusion if you have an old or one with a few cores or low frequency CPU use packages not ports just as suggested by my forum fellows.


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## esper (Jun 29, 2018)

Minbari said:


> If you try to build Xorg from ports on an Atom CPU or Core2 Duo of courses it will take 12 hours or more. I've just builded Xorg yesterday and it took me less than 30 minutes on an i7 processor. The most time spend by my machine to build a port it's for llvm which take 1.5-2 hours.
> In conclusion if you have an old or one with a few cores or low frequency CPU use packages not ports just as suggested by my forum fellows.


Thanks for this, I found out what i was doing wrong


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