# My boy loves Ubuntu because we can't get graphics going after two days!



## PacketMan (Nov 2, 2014)

My nine-year-old boy took my Ubuntu 14.04 ISO disk, stuck it in a box, clicked _next_ a few times, and was up and running about 30 minutes later, surfing the net using Firefox, and with music playing via a pre-packaged DLNA player (pulling music from one of my non-GUI enabled FreeBSD machines).

He said: "Daddy let's try PC-BSD and FreeBSD with GUI."  Two days and lots of reading later, I am nowhere closer to getting a basic GUI going, let alone getting a good rich full-featured GUI going.  When xorg tries to run my monitor goes into powersave mode, and all I can do is power cycle and try again.

This is the year 2014, not 1994. We should not be fooling around with building GUIs, and reading endless (sometime contradictory)  threads about how to work around the various issues.

I'm probably going to get flamed but if you want to grow the fans/users base of FreeBSD, then a GUI has got to be brain-dead simple. Yes, give the people the power to hack it, smack it, and whack it, that will spawn innovation.  But to lose days of trying to get a video card working is not the right direction.  Especially in this day and age with 'retail hand-held appliances' like iPods, iPads, and endless cellphone models, FreeBSD has an amazing opportunity in front of it. In the "Internet of Everything" (Cisco talk) FreeBSD has an incredibly large future never possible before.

A nine-year-old boy, who enjoys computers and enjoys 'making changes' is already asking me: "Daddy when can we put Ubuntu back?"  Us FreeBSD fans/users need to get our nine-year-olds on board so that when they grow up with the next amazing idea, FreeBSD will be their first choice of OS to whack and smack.  

Thanks for listening.


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## Oko (Nov 2, 2014)

That is very unfortunate. This is a picture...





... of my older daughter working on vanilla FreeBSD 6.1 when she was only three months old. She didn't like it either so she switched to OpenBSD a few days later. Right now she is seven and has only a few kernel patches accepted by Theo and other developers.


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## Anass (Nov 2, 2014)

Hi,

I agree with you, FreeBSD is a great OS, but it's still missing a great GUI as well, by GUI I mean a good/stable window system and desktop environment).

The problems you are encountering is not because of FreeBSD itself, but because of the X11 stack, which is hard to configure and user-unfriendly. It's true that Ubuntu could get this working out of the box (If not all the time...), it's because they are focused only on tweaking/adapting X11 and other external packages together. But the FreeBSD team maintains a whole operating system that you can find in a single source tree, from the kernel tol the userland utilities. At the end, we get a great OS which is FreeBSD, having great documentation and a helpful community.

The solution I can offer to you at the moment is to use PC-BSD, which is FreeBSD plus a graphical user interface that works out of the box just like Ubuntu does, that could be used for day to day GUI work without GUI setup hassle.

But anyway, when you find yourself so deep into FreeBSD, you will anyways find yourself going back to vanilla FreeBSD  The same as I did.

I hope you'll find a solution for your problem.


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## BSDBernd (Nov 2, 2014)

PacketMan: Solution: install Ubuntu and dual boot it with FreeBSD and try to get things working better and better concerning the FreeBSD system until finally your son maybe boots FreeBSD more often than Ubuntu.

Edit: I added a 'maybe'. Nobody is of course forced to use a particular OS. If you can get your work done and even have fun with a particular OS, then use that OS.


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## PacketMan (Nov 2, 2014)

Hi Anass,

First of all, I have spent a day with PC-BSD and get the same problem. I cannot get past trying to get X11 to work. As far as I am concerned FreeBSD and PC-BSD are the same today: getting a GUI to work is a royal pain in the rear.

Yes FreeBSD is an awesome OS, perhaps one of the best in the world, and perhaps my wording was not the best.  But the point I am trying to make is right now a lot of people who are attracted to working with the nuts and bolts of an OS are attracted to Ubuntu and other Linuxes because they can at least get it up and working pretty darn good with a GUI.  Then they can go into the guts to make it do what they want it to do.  If you lose critical mass then you lose development resources, and if not fixed, FreeBSD can die off just like other great things in this world have.  We need to get past this GUI issue so that millions of kids (especially teenagers more so than nine-year-olds) can start using FreeBSD with a GUI and lots of other stuff with no effort, let them love it to build up critical mass. With that critical mass you will get demand for more innovation, and a subset of those users will step up to the plate to build the next great releases of the OS. A bunch of guys in their 40s are saying the same thing to me: "Why are you fooling around with an OS with crappy GUI support when you can have a Linux up and running with no effort?" I continue to defend my choice of using FreeBSD first.

I did not, and do not, mean no disrespect to the developers. I know of lots of 'platforms' that have FreeBSD under the hood in some shape or form, and the stuff frankly is pretty much rock solid reliable.

See what I mean?


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## Anass (Nov 2, 2014)

PacketMan said:


> HI Anass,
> 
> First of all, I have spent a day with PC-BSD and get the same problem. I cannot get past trying to get X11 to work. As far as I am concerned FreeBSD, and PC-BSD are the same today.....getting a GUI to work is royal pain in the rear.
> 
> ...



I definitely agree with you.


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## getopt (Nov 2, 2014)

Anass said:


> The problems you are encountering is not because of FreeBSD itself, but because of the X11 stack, which is hard to configure and user-unfriendly.



Some like to look at a GUI and do not care what’s under the hood. A nine-year-old kid does not care about IT security. But if that is a topic there is no difference if you get bitten in Redmond or Cupertino or by X.Org. It is a matter of trust and I have no reason to trust in X.Org source code. About one year ago a review of the Xserver code started. What has been found were hundreds of bugs; some of them were older than the kids we were talking about.



> That's true that Ubuntu could get this working out of the box (If not all the time...) it’s because they are focused only on tweaking/adapting X11 and other external packages together.
> 
> But the FreeBSD team …


It’s okay when Ubuntu dedicate people try to do this, but I hope this does not happen here with FreeBSD. If there were a pixel oriented console that had not that much security related issues I’d give it a try. Until then I prefer to stay with an insecure console.


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## scottro (Nov 2, 2014)

Ubuntu has a different focus.   I think (and I'm seeing this more, now that RHEL7 is out, with systemd and other Fedora-isms, because more sysadmins are noticing it now), that many feel that many Linux systems are focusing too much on the single user or family user desktop and laptop, and, with each iteration, making it harder for the sysadmin. 

So, yeah it would be nice if FreeBSD had an easier to use desktop, if we didn't need some form of Linux emulation to get some programs, and so on.  However, if it's a choice between keeping it a server OS and having to work harder than I would wish to get a good desktop, I'd rather it stayed the way it is. 

This doesn't mean I completely disagree -- I think, at least when I'm in one sort of mood, that were it to gain a larger share of users, it would be easier to get vendor support, and so on. 

I have found that, speaking JUST FOR MYSELF, I actually found it quite easy to get FreeBSD working with a GUI with Intel (especially since 10.1-RC3), and NVidia desktops.  I did, on the other hand, and somewhat ironically, have a lot of problem getting PCBSD to work properly.

Ubuntu is aimed at a non-technical audience.  Personally, having used both in production, I feel that FreeBSD performs better but I have no benchmarks. 

For what it's worth, I know a few folks that I consider real *nix gurus who, after they married and had kids, stopped using FreeBSD, or Slackware, or Gentoo and switched to Ubuntu. 

It would be nice if PC-BSD (or GhostBSD, or anything similar) got to the point of being Ubuntu-ish.  I do feel there would be value in that, and (just my personal opinion) I think that Ubuntu's original ease of use, especially when it first came out, and Mr. Shuttleworth's salesmanship, did contribute quite a bit to many vendors of both hardware and software starting to think about Linux.  (And probably, in some cases, making it easier to get something working on any of the BSDs.)

The downside is when it starts forgetting the old adage that Unix doesn't stop you from doing stupid things because it would also stop you from doing clever things, and the GUIs, wizards and so on, start getting in the way. 

Wishy-washily yours,


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 2, 2014)

scottro said what I would have said only I wouldn't have said it as nicely.


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## PacketMan (Nov 2, 2014)

Hey scottro, some good points there. I do want to say though, that I am not trying to say that I want FreeBSD to be Ubuntu-ish.  I just want to see FreeBSD have awesome GUIs that work out of the gate. And I don't want that just for my benefit.  I think that it is best for the survival (over many many years) of the OS, if it did have great easy-to-turn-on GUIs, so that it can it can grow its user/fan base. Imagine another million users (mostly teens and 20s) loving their FreeBSD, and over time becoming the next generation of hardcore developers to take the OS into 2050 and beyond.

And remember, just because FreeBSD could have great easy-to-turn-on GUI's, doesn't mean sysadmins have to use it. There is no reason that FreeBSD can't be awesome in many 'segments' of the 'market'.

All that just said, I'm not a OS/programmer/developer guy...I'm a hardcore internetworking (routers/switches/Ethernet/MPLS/IPv4/IPv6/etc.) guy. I make a living building networks that grow to hundreds of routers. So, it's not fair for me to complain and do nothing. Hopefully someone will be faster than me, but I will keep trying, and if I solve my dilemma I will post my results.  If someday I can contribute some serious effort to this OS I will.


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## Anass (Nov 2, 2014)

PacketMan said:


> I just want to see FreeBSD have awesome GUIs that work out of the gate


I believe we need a great desktop for FreeBSD anyways that fits both professionals and normal users. At the same time this desktop should not affect the stability of the core FreeBSD OS, like adding fancy UI features at the price of introducing security issues or endlessly changing the location of configuration files on each minor release with the pretext of fixing some X or Y GUI feature (a lot of Linux distributions are doing this, including Ubuntu). Well, I believe that a whole great functional desktop can be programmed without touching a bit in the core FreeBSD OS.



getopt said:


> About one year ago a review of the Xserver code started. What has been found were hundreds of bugs some of them were older than the kids we were talking about.


I think the reason why the FreeBSD team doesn't adapt the OS for X.Org, is simply because X.Org should adapt itself to fit into the high quality world of FreeBSD. X.Org is very old and has many issues, and allocating resources in the FreeBSD team for software like this will hurt the road map of the project. But I'm sure that when a great graphics stack is developed somewhere, the FreeBSD team will be passionate to make it part of the OS and allocate time and resources to make it work out of the box. Then we will have the desktop that our children and family can use.

For the time being, no desktop in the open source world is fully usable, out of the box, for everyday use, both for professional and home usage. It simply doesn't exist.


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## Oko (Nov 2, 2014)

PacketMan,

I think it would have been far more helpful if you have posted your video card specification after PC-BSD failed to boot first time than struggling for two days and coming up with above post. I have been using UNIX much like you for twenty years. Here are a few facts about FreeBSD on the desktop:

PC-BSD does indeed work for most people out of box even easier than Ubuntu.
PC-BSD is not by any stretch of the imagination Ubuntu of FreeBSD. It is more like GNOME on Red Hat 6.6 trying to be a corporate desktop.
PC-BSD shines if you need ZFS, life preserver and jails. Otherwise it probably sucks. Kids really don't need ZFS or life preserver. They need Flash.
PC0BSD needs lots of serious resources which most home users don't have.
FreeBSD on the desktop is not for the faint of heart. Unlike for example OpenBSD most FreeBSD developers (this is just an observation from conferences) don't eat their own soup and use OS X as their desktop. Why would I then use FreeBSD on the desktop?
In my own experience X.Org on FreeBSD has always felt very flaky and fragile comparing to Xenoxara on OpenBSD.
I do not endorse using FreeBSD or OpenBSD on the desktop to anybody, nine-year-old kids in particular unless there is somebody who really knows how those things work and can set them up. That being said my kids use OpenBSD desktops, including for their school work.
Most people use a GUI and some applications, not the OS. Please approach any average OS X user and ask them if they can locate the shell, let alone if they can use it.


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## scottro (Nov 3, 2014)

Y'know, I keep hearing Oko's point 5 about FreeBSD developers, that most of them use Mac for their desktop.  Can anyone tell me where that statement originated?  Oko mentions that for them, it's their impression from conferences, but I've heard it frequently , that's why I wonder how true it is.   The only person I know with an @freebsd.org address, at least while I worked with them, used FreeBSD as their desktop.

Regardless, for me it works relatively well as a desktop.  

I think that my ideal would be for FreeBSD to stay as it is, but that there be some PCBSD-ish variant that didn't have the faults Oko's post mentioned. Shucks, I've referenced that post several times, I might as well click the like button for it, even if I don't completely agree with all of it.


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## PacketMan (Nov 3, 2014)

Thanks Oko.

I could have given up after the first try but I find a good way to learn is to try and try again. And the point I was trying to make was not about my nine-year-old not being able to use FreeBSD. My point is the day of trying to get a driver to work with a certain video card is so 1995 3.5" floppy-ish. This is 2015 almost. FreeBSD might be awesome at the moment because it is strong in the old ways of the world, but when it dies because no one stepped up to to the plate because everyone was over at the Linux parties, because they don't have to spend days trying to get the things most take for granted now working, well that kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it? FreeBSD can't continue to be awesome if support for it dies.

Point #5 - A sales guy tries to sell me an amazing product. When I ask him how he or his company uses it, he responds they/he doesn't use it, he uses a different product.  How do you think that will change me (the buyer) and my thinking?

Anyway I think I have said the same thing over and over. I've made my point. Great products die all the time, due to a certain line of thinking.


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## Anass (Nov 3, 2014)

PacketMan said:


> Thanks Oko.
> 
> I could have given up after the first try but I find a good way to learn is to try and try again. And the point I was trying to make was not about my 9 year old not being able to use FreeBSD. My point is the day of trying to get a driver to work with a certain video card is so 1995 3.5" floppy ish. This is 2015 almost. FreeBSD might be awesome at the moment because it is strong in the old ways of the world, but when it dies because no one stepped up to to the plate because everyone was over at the Linux parties, because they don't have to spend days trying to get working the things most take for granted now....well that kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it. FreeBSD can't continue to be awesome if support for it dies.
> 
> ...



I guess it would be a good idea if you can describe the issue you are encountering, alongside with some error logs, that way we can identify the issue and perhaps we can offer a solution. I'm sure there are quite a lot of people who can help with this.


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## wblock@ (Nov 3, 2014)

scottro said:


> Y'know, I keep hearing Oko's point 5 about FreeBSD developers, that most of them use Mac for their desktop.  Can anyone tell me where that statement originated?
> Oko mentions that for them, it's their impression from conferences, but I've heard it frequently , that's why I wonder how true it is.
> The only person I know with an @freebsd.org address, at least while I worked with them, used FreeBSD as their desktop.



It's a tiresome bit of advocacy that gets a little more tiresome each time it is repeated.  It is no more helpful to point out that at BSDCan there were at least as many people using FreeBSD natively as there were using any other BSD variant combined.


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## PacketMan (Nov 3, 2014)

Anass said:


> I guess it would be a good idea if you can describe the issue you are encountering, alongside with some error logs, that way we can identify the issue and perhaps we can offer a solution. I'm sure there is quite a lot of people who can help on this.



Yep. I will pick at it some more first. If there's still no joy say by the next weekend or two, then I will post in what I think is the appropriate topic. Thanks.


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## Oko (Nov 3, 2014)

PacketMan said:


> Point #5 - A salesguy tries to sell me an amazing product. When I ask him how he or his company uses it, he responds they/he doesn't use it, he uses a different product. How do you think that will change me (the buyer) and my thinking?


The truth of the matter is that PC-BSD people actually use PC-BSD and knowing  what Jordan Hubbard did with Apple I am sure he wants you to have the same experience with PC-BSD. However I am sure he will be the first one to point out that they are really trying to sell you a workstation OS (think of Sun Blade from 2002 running Solaris 10) rather than Ubuntu.


PacketMan said:


> Great products die all the time, due to a certain line of thinking.


If this game was all about technology I would be typing this post from a $45,000 Alpha workstation (big-endian RISC processor) with some kind of hybrid OS (a VMS + UNIX child). I have a grant to pay for it  but my kids would not know what a computer is until they get to a college.


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## Oko (Nov 3, 2014)

wblock@ said:


> It's a tiresome bit of advocacy that gets a little more tiresome each time it is repeated.  It is no more helpful to point out that at BSDCan there were at least as many people using FreeBSD natively as there were using any other BSD variant combined.


So let us put it to rest  This is a group of FreeBSD hackers in action. I think the number of Macs is pretty obvious.






Now an OpenBSD Hackaton. The number of ThinkPads should be pretty obvious.






Now I have never said that this was a scientific study 

I would also dispute you on your second claim. If you just look at the raw numbers that might be the case, but I dare you to  compare the quality and number of posts at questions@freebsd and misc@openbsd and tell me what you think. Yes I do know that this is a FreeBSD forum and I am going to shut up.

P.S. My salary is in part paid for managing both OpenBSD and FreeBSD machines. Unfortunately I have to deal with Red Hat as well. Be my guest and tell me which one you think I would like to drop.


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## Anass (Nov 3, 2014)

Oko said:


> So lets us put it to rest  This is group of FreeBSD hackers in action. I think the number of Mac's is pretty obvious.
> ---
> Now OpenBSD hackaton. The number of ThinkPads should be pretty obvious.
> ...
> ...



I do agree with the FreeBSD team using Macs, it's a great choice because it makes them more productive, and they can have a comfortable desktop environment (OS X) which is itself partly based on FreeBSD. By having a comfortable desktop environment, and running FreeBSD in a virtual machine, they provide to us: a high quality OS, commercial-quality documentation and an appealing easy-to-use website that can attract more users and developers.

That said, why should the FreeBSD team make themselves suffer using PCs with X11 and a minimal window manager? Using X11 for daily development doesn't  mean they are going to offer an Ubuntu-ish desktop, or that it will make them change the project's road map and start developing a GUI which is out of scope of the FreeBSD project.

How many open source teams are using X11 worldwide? I'm sure there are many. How many great desktop X11 GUIs do we have? None. As I said earlier, a great open source *nix desktop that matches the quality of OS X or Windows simply doesn't exist at the moment.

When I work with an X11 desktop for more than half a day it makes me feel very tired of it and non-productive. Why not use a Mac OS X and SSH into my FreeBSD box and get the work done? Or use a VM, install the tools and get all graphics/mouse/audio working.

I will be glad to participate in the development of a desktop environment for FreeBSD. But I cannot use X11 on my development machine to do that.

EDIT: I should mention that the FreeBSD project supports the desktop more than OpenBSD does, the proof is that they have a dedicated team just to work on a KDE version for FreeBSD: https://freebsd.kde.org. There are also more graphics drivers for FreeBSD than OpenBSD. And many more, just to name a few.


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## Oko (Nov 3, 2014)

Anass said:


> I should mention that the FreeBSD project supports the desktop more than OpenBSD does, the proof is that they have a dedicated team just to work on a KDE version for FreeBSD https://freebsd.kde.org.


I am sure you heard of M:Tier.. They provide Fortune 500 companies with OpenBSD desktops. It is a niche product just like PC-BSD. Two of their developers who work full time on OpenBSD also happen to be on the GNOME team.


Anass said:


> There is also more graphics drives for FreeBSD than OpenBSD.


I hope you are not bragging here about that NVidia binary blob crap. If NVidia is so friendly to FreeBSD why don't they release the CUDA GPU for FreeBSD and actually allow people to use FreeBSD for scientific computing?

Anyhow we have to put this to rest. I enjoyed talking to you guys but it is my bed time. I feel bad for PacketMan's son. I hope he actually posts some video hardware specifications here so that we can help him with that PC-BSD installation. It would be a shame that his son doesn't learn a little bit of hardcore UNIX from his dad.[/user]


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## Anass (Nov 3, 2014)

Oko said:


> I hope you are not bragging here about that NVidia binary blob crap


Of course I'm not talking about the Nvidia blob. I meant the number of graphics card drivers that was ported by the FreeBSD team to the OS.


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## wblock@ (Nov 3, 2014)

Oko said:


> I think the number of Mac's is pretty obvious.



Yes.  Now, realize that an Apple logo does not mean OS X is being used.  But that was not what I said.


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## jrm@ (Nov 3, 2014)

I don't begrudge anyone for running whatever OS they (or their employer) choose(es), especially if they are contributing code.  On the other hand, I was surprised by the number of FreeBSD developers running Macs (with OS X) at BSDCan.  It just makes sense that when a large chunk of our developer/user base is seemingly not interested in FreeBSD on the desktop, we will play catchup to OpenBSD and in some ways DragonFlyBSD.  That's not to say I'm not grateful for the good working going on.  I'm running a FreeBSD laptop with great X.Org support including suspend and resume. 



Anass said:


> That said, why the FreeBSD team should make themselves suffer using PCs with X11 and a minimal window manager ?


Some developers are more productive using a simple window manager than a desktop environment. 

P.S. I'm aware that the current@ thread I linked to starts off as a joke.


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## BSDBernd (Nov 3, 2014)

Oko said:


> So lets us put it to rest  This is group of FreeBSD hackers in action. I think the number of Mac's is pretty obvious.



I would be quite surprised to be at a BSD conference and not see any Macbook, not only because Mac OS X is a brilliant, stable BSD-based OS that in my opinion beats Windows easily (at least when you do not want to play a lot of games), but also because in my opinion the Macbook series is one of the greatest series of laptops ever produced. Even his majesty King Linus himself says so: http://www.cultofmac.com/162823/linux-creator-linus-torvalds-i-love-my-macbook-air/. I have a Macbook Air Mid 2011 and must say that this is the greatest laptop I ever had, together with Mac OS X this blows you away, there are in my opinion worlds between a Thinkpad and a Macbook Air. I by the way had FreeBSD 11.0 running on my Mac for testing purposes. The bad thing is that there is no Broadcom driver for this at the moment (using virtual machines, it seems that one can get around this). But in that picture, if I see this right, I see only older Mac hardware, so it could very well be that many of those people run FreeBSD on it, e.g. there is the bwn driver for the Apple Airport Extreme WiFi card.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 3, 2014)

PacketMan said:


> a lot of people who are attracted to working with the nuts and bolts of an OS are attracted to Ubuntu and other Linuxes because they can at least get it up and working pretty darn good with a GUI.


I only see that on Reddit and Linux forums but, by a GUI, I presume you mean pointy/clicky buttons to select options.


> Then they can into the guts to make it do what they want it to do.


I don't understand why a GUI makes that possible but the command line or a text file does not.


> If you lose critical mass then you lose development resources, and if not fixed, FreeBSD can die off just like other great things in this world have.


I don't see where FreeBSD needs fixing. Anything Linux can do, FreeBSD can do better. It's why Netflix runs on FreeBSD and that's a recent choice on their part.



> We need to get past this GUI issue so that millions of kids (especially teenagers more so than 9 year olds) can start FreeBSD with GUI and lots of other stuff with no effort, let them love it to build up critical mass.


If you said, millions of serious hobbyists and young developers, I would be with you but just to garner millions of kids who want a GUI so they can play their games, you lost me.

FreeBSD is a professional operating system for professionals. It's great that we can run a desktop, and the idea behind PC-BSD is wonderful, but this is not a popularity contest and to wind up like Linux has, trying to be a Windows clone and Xbox all in one, is not my idea of where I'd want FreeBSD to be.


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## phoenix (Nov 3, 2014)

As with everything FreeBSD-related, it all comes down to the hardware.

The Linux kernel and distributions support just about every piece of random hardware you can find.  The quality of that support is all over the map.  FreeBSD supports a much more limited selection of hardware, but it tends to have better support for the hardware.

Nowhere do you mention what hardware you are using, nor which versions of FreeBSD you are using.

I got a working 9.x desktop running at home using an AMD Phenom-II x4 and a Radeon GPU (forget the model, it's a half-height silent card) within a couple of hours, including putting all the hardware together into a case.  And I managed to convert that system to PC-BSD 9 within a couple of hours.  Why was it so easy?  Because that hardware is very well supported by FreeBSD, right down to all the sensors on the motherboard, the (e)SATA controller, the USB controllers, the GPU, etc.

However, I didn't like the performance of the GPU using the OSS graphics driver, so I switched it for an nVidia 210 (also half-height and silent).  As there are official binary drivers from nVidia, performance increased by a large margin, and the system has been running like that for a year or so now.

Moral of the story:  for the best experience using FreeBSD, be sure to do your research and use hardware that's specifically supported by FreeBSD.  Don't just throw random hardware at it and hope for the best.


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## sulman (Nov 3, 2014)

Ubuntu is specifically designed to be _that_ Linux distribution. That's why Valve made it the supported client for Steam; that's why it has the reputation for being the most user friendly distribution.

Reality? Ubuntu is a great place to start but a bad place to end up.

It's overly heavy; the GUI tools can lead users down some blind alleys - Nvidia users still have this uninituitive procedure to follow in order to use a proprietary driver, and if they want up to date builds they end up having to play with PPA configurations.

Now, herein lies a problem: the second you have have to take apart a GUI tool and start rooting around configuration files, you're screwed. You have no context what is going on, what the files are for, how to read about them, what the changes you make mean. Look at the Steam support forums. What happens is users of _other distributions_ end up giving support to Ubuntu users.

I look at the problem the other way around. The terminal is nothing to be afraid of; in fact, it is your friend. It's just another tool, a very powerful one. GUIs are fun and beautiful but you need to have at least a high level idea of what is happening with your system.


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## nemo (Nov 3, 2014)

Hello, guys.

My story is that a friend of mine once told me about FreeBSD. It was nine or so years ago - I started with the 7.0 RC. Yes, I had some issues getting X.Org to work. But they were quite the same issues I had with Linux distributions that I had used before (Mandrake, OpenSUSe, etc.). I am no IT pro, just a hobbyist.

Some months ago, I rebuilt two of my boxes. One is dedicated to play games, running Windows 7, just because my son is not much into hacking. He is allowed to play two hours a day.

The other box runs FreeBSD with KDE. Radeon GPU, Core2Duo, 4 GB RAM. It is the main home computer. My son works on it if he needs. My wife says that there's no difference using Windows or KDE. Click and run Firefox (with the latest - and last - Linux Flash plugin), VLC, LibreOffice. slideshows, movies, music, older games trhu through Wine (Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Civilization 3, FlatOut 2). Some DTP, OpenSCAD, VirtualBox, Repsnapper. Some Linux applications. Everything in the Czech language, except man pages, but I don't care. What else does a man need?

Now a little bit about drivers. Has any of you tried to run OS X on any random hardware? It would be a walk through hell. What makes Apple and their OS so cool? Isn't it the tuned-up hardware with tuned-up drivers talking to a great kernel, bringing the user an easy-to-use shiny desktop environment, all packed in a precisely made box? That's all that FreeBSD needs: buy/use compatible hardware, install the system, log in and have fun. It's really that easy.


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## BSDBernd (Nov 4, 2014)

nemo said:


> Now a little bit about drivers. Has any of you tried to run OS X on any random hardware? It would be a walk through the hell. What makes Apple and their OS soo cool? Isn't it the tuned-up hardware with tuned-up drivers talking to a great kernel, bringing the user an easy-to-use shiny desktop environment, all packed in a preciselly made box. That's all that FreeBSD needs: buy/use a compatible hardware, install the system, log in and have fun. It's really that easy.



Indeed! Thanks for pointing this out. The sad thing seems to be that often people first buy their hardware and later discover FreeBSD and try to install it on their random hardware. I have a Macbook from mid 2011, but it contains a cursed Broadcom device  which is not supported yet by FreeBSD. People should somehow get to know FreeBSD before they buy their hardware .


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## Oko (Nov 4, 2014)

wblock@ said:


> Yes.  Now, realize that an Apple logo does not mean OSX is being used.  But that was not what I said.


Right  FreeBSD developers are running FreeBSD without network since there are no drivers for Broadcom devices and in VESA mode because the Nouveau driver doesn't support NVidia video cards commonly found in MAC laptops. That kind of attitude is the exact reason why I have not used FreeBSD outside work for the past seven years


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2014)

https://www.glenbarber.us/2011/11/29/MacBook-Pro-5,1-FreeBSD-Hardware-Support.html.  Broadcom support, Nvidia support...  Surely some of them were running Mac OS X, although that too is a variant of FreeBSD.  But I'm not suggesting those Thinkpads with hidden screens are running Windows just because they have Windows stickers.

This is all a digression from the way this thread started, which was a perception of FreeBSD or PC-BSD not meeting a need for install-and-go desktop GUI users.  That has not been FreeBSD's traditional target.  It was PC-BSD's target, although I admit I have not tried it lately.  Neither operating system has near the number of paid people working on GUI stuff as Linux.  What that means is that support for the latest graphics hardware tends to be slower in getting to FreeBSD.


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## protocelt (Nov 4, 2014)

To be honest, the mailing lists would probably be a better place to discuss this further IMO. What operating system the FreeBSD developers use to develop on doesn't really have anything to do with the original post of this thread. Just my 2 cents.


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## CoTones (Nov 4, 2014)

When I was noob with FreeBSD, reading that corporation-sockpuppets-supported fanboyism "FreeBSD is better... BSD licensed! Speed! Stability! Not a kernel with GNU crap! Einstein uses FreeBSD for everything..." made me curious.

Now, when I know a bit of it, I left it for hobby only. Using it FreeBSD developers "style" -  virtually. So far I'm not considering it even for a server.

But seriously, everyone should test operating system the human way: take two hours for the OS and all common desktop applications installation. If time is out and kid or granny can't enjoy its use, then that OS is for cyborgs, not humans 

PS Cyborgs have no emotions and have a long and boring live. Fits perfectly for bean counting too.


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## getopt (Nov 4, 2014)

CoTones said:


> But seriously, everyone should test operating system the Human Way: take two hours for OS and all common desktop applications installation. If time is out and kid or granny can't enjoy its usage, then that OS is for cyborgs, not humans



LOL! Dead wrong, but: if parents have a need for an OS that their kids cannot mess with, just take one with a steep learning curve. If the kids once hack that too, you can be proud of them, because they were not wasting their time playing stupid games.


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## manilaboy1vic (Dec 18, 2014)

PacketMan said:


> My nine-year-old boy took my Ubuntu 14.04 ISO disk, stuck it in a box, clicked _next_ a few times, and was up and running about 30 minutes later, surfing the net using Firefox, and with music playing via a pre-packaged DLNA player (pulling music from one of my non-GUI enabled FreeBSD machines).
> 
> He said: "Daddy let's try PC-BSD and FreeBSD with GUI."  Two days and lots of reading later, I am nowhere closer to getting a basic GUI going, let alone getting a good rich full-featured GUI going.  When xorg tries to run my monitor goes into powersave mode, and all I can do is power cycle and try again.
> 
> ...



This is interesting to hear.  When I first started using FreeBSD I was able to get X running pretty easily.

Just used `sysinstall` and added X and Gnome and then edited .xinitrc and ran `startx`.  My last build I believe all I did was `pkg install xorg` and `pkg install gnome` and edited my .xinitrc and ran `startx`.

Sorry your having troubles.  This forum would most likely be happy to assist, but may refer you to PC-BSD forums.

Is the PC-BSD install all command line or interactive like a BIOS?  If I could get FreeBSD going back in the day then I'm sure you can.  You can figure it out.  Good luck.


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## PacketMan (Dec 18, 2014)

I've got non-GUI FreeBSD running on a few machines, and got X/KDE on one machine as well.  The forum folks are awesome. PC-BSD did not work either. The point I was trying to make was about GUIs should be installed by default so that we can attract more kids to the OS.  I consider this discussion well answered.


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## ANOKNUSA (Dec 18, 2014)

@OP---I'm saying this with no intent to offend: Your nine-year-old is nine years old.  If he _really_ wanted to know about these things, he'd learn. When I was his age I spent an entire weekend in front of a keyboard with the DOS 6 manual open next to me, trying to get _TIE Fighter_ to run. There were other things I could have done with my time---I had a bike, and a game console, and baseball gear and a playground down the street and friends to hang out with and all that. But I wanted to play _TIE Fighter,_, confound it, and tinkering with the obscure bits of that operating system was the only way to make that happen. It's that same tinkering spirit that helped me exactly duplicate my Linux graphical setup on my FreeBSD box the same day I installed the latter.

Your son wants Ubuntu, though, because rather than being the tinkering type he really seems to be just a typical nine-year-old kid, impatient and partial to convenience. He wants flash and bling, and has made it clear that the quickest and most convenient path to that is the one he wants to take. Those are his immediate desires, and once those desires are satisfied there's no reason to assume he'll somehow take it upon himself to look beyond that flashy surface. He very well may be curious, of course, but then if that's the case then you'll see the same curiosity regardless of the operating system he starts out on. The same goes for anyone else---there's no logical reason to believe that someone who thinks graphics are the cornerstone of the computing experience will ever take it upon themselves to muck around with the internals of the operating system.

Question: If FreeBSD offered the exact same hassle-free graphical experience as any other operating system, what reason would there be for most people to switch to it? Any time this general topic comes up for discussion anywhere it always falls into the same trap---this bizarre assumption that making one thing exactly like another thing will somehow make it more "popular," and that popularity will somehow make it "better," completely ignoring the obvious fact that if one thing is like most everything else then there's no point to its existence. It's superfluous. I'm pretty new to FreeBSD, and can't say exactly what the goals of the developers and community really are, but I can't see why those goals should be "make FreeBSD exactly like everything else." I replaced Linux with FreeBSD on my production box because it was _fundamentally_ different. Were it fundamentally the same, then what reason would there be for me to come here?


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## wblock@ (Dec 18, 2014)

It's not about age.  Some people are interested in operating systems, most are not.  For people in the second category, an operating system is just a way to get to what they want to do.

That said, distributions of FreeBSD like PC-BSD are a good thing.  They give people who just want to use applications an easy setup without distracting the main operating system.  It would be nice to have a few more distributions like that, some made for lower-resource machines.


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## pkubaj (Dec 20, 2014)

Isn't NanoBSD for low-resource machines? I remember that there was at some point also PicoBSD.


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## scottro (Dec 20, 2014)

wblock@'s statement reminds me of some old GUI FreeBSD live CDs, Frenzy and FreeSBIE.  Both were good for low resource machines and had a GUI.  I don't know about GhostBSD, I haven't tried it, PCBSD does seem to require a lot of resource.

(SIDEBAR)  I thought that putting an @ in front of a name gave it the user tag.  Not sure what I missed but even the old user tag doesn't seem to work.  Sorry wblock@, I tried.

The main advantage to greater popularity is that it gets hardware and software vendors to start thinking about you.  I think that Ubuntu did that, in many ways, for Linux's desktop market.  Its ease of use got more people into it, meaning more people wanting it to work, meaning more hardware and software vendors began thinking about support.  Shucks, Ubuntu even got mentioned on The Big Bang Theory.

The disadvantage is that once the desktop users start taking over, they do things like what has happened to RedHat, where it seems that the majority of developers think like desktop users--for example, crippling the text based installer to concentrate on the GUI version.  Fine for a distribution aimed at the desktop, not so good when it gets into something aimed at a server market.

So, I'd like to see it more popular but not too popular.  I'd also like to be a billionaire.  Just because I want it, doesn't mean it will happen, and just because I don't like something, doesn't mean that it's bad.   As Tina Fey once wrote


> It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good.


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## Remington (Dec 20, 2014)

PacketMan said:


> Thanks Oko
> Anyway I think I have said the same thing over and over. I've made my point. Great products die all the time, due to a certain line of thinking.



I seriously doubt FreeBSD is going to die since it's being used on servers at financial institutions and web hosting.  FreeBSD is not for faint-of-heart and its rock solid OS for servers.  I would rather keep FreeBSD as it is and let PC-BSD folks build their GUI based system from FreeBSD.  They know exactly what they're doing and they're far more likely will get GUI working without glitches which most of us will encounter if we do it on our own.  I've used PC-BSD before but I'm Mac OS X user which is also based on early release of FreeBSD as well.  I gave up Windows 2 years ago and I don't regret it.

FreeBSD developers should solely focus on improving network stacks, security and stability while PC-BSD focuses on deploying FreeBSD with GUI for desktop users.  I could build a GUI from scratch with FreeBSD but it's going to take a lot of my time and tweaking to get it working.  I've done it before but I clearly do not have time since I'm system administrator and developer as well.


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## wblock@ (Dec 20, 2014)

scottro said:


> (SIDEBAR) I thought that putting an @ in front of a name gave it the user tag.



It does, it is just confusing that some of us have an @ at the end of their user name also.  There is even autocomplete on it, so type @ and the first few letters to see a list.


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## Remington (Dec 20, 2014)

BSDBernd said:


> Indeed! Thanks for pointing this out. The sad thing seems to be that often people first buy their hardware and later discover FreeBSD and try to install it on their random hardware. I have a Macbook from mid 2011, but it contains a cursed Broadcom device  which is not supported yet by FreeBSD. People should somehow get to know FreeBSD before they buy their hardware .



I know FreeBSD have their own hardware compatibility list but its often outdated and doesn't list specific hardware.  Maybe what it needs is a current hardware compatibility list on current motherboards, video cards, processors that are tested to work with FreeBSD or PC-BSD.

There should be two separate listings... one for servers and another for desktop computers.  FreeBSD will pretty much work with outdated hardware but many shops don't sell outdated hardware except ebay.  It has to be a list of current hardware that's being sold on Newegg or Amazon.


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## getopt (Dec 20, 2014)

Looking at the FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE Hardware Notes for compatible printers:

```
[i386,pc98,amd64,powerpc] The ulpt(4) driver provides support for USB printers and parallel printer conversion cables, including the following:

    ATen parallel printer adapter
    Belkin F5U002 parallel printer adapter
    Canon BJ F850, S600
    Canon LBP-1310, 350
    Entrega USB-to-parallel printer adapter
    Hewlett-Packard HP Deskjet 3420 (P/N: C8947A #ABJ)
    Oki Data MICROLINE ML660PS
    Seiko Epson PM-900C, 880C, 820C, 730C
```

As I can hardly distinct adapters from printers: Which one should I hide under the christmas-tree?


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## Remington (Dec 20, 2014)

getopt said:


> Looking at the FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE Hardware Notes for compatible printers:
> 
> ```
> [i386,pc98,amd64,powerpc] The ulpt(4) driver provides support for USB printers and parallel printer conversion cables, including the following:
> ...



None. HP Deskjet 3420 isn't even listed on Newegg so that list is outdated which proved my point.  There should be a wiki page or something similar where FreeBSD users can list known current hardware that is proven to work with FreeBSD or PC-BSD.  Any hardware that becomes outdated will be moved to outdated list to keep things tidy.  There should be a list of motherboards, video cards, network adapters, printers, web cams and other rare hardware.


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## getopt (Dec 20, 2014)

Oooh! No business for Santa Clause this year ...
still awaiting a printer manufacturer comes up with an 100% compatible BSD-printer.

Well there is a wiki on laptops, but have you looked at this how useful it is?


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## Remington (Dec 20, 2014)

getopt said:


> Oooh! No business for Santa Clause this year ...
> still awaiting a printer manufacturer comes up with an 100% compatible BSD-printer.
> 
> Well there is a wiki on laptops, but have you looked at this how useful it is?



Saw it, totally useless, outdated and buried deep in FreeBSD's eco-system where nobody will see it.  'Recommended Hardware List' should be on the front page for everyone to see. IMHO.

I also checked PC-BSD website and its not even there.  I think that's something FreeBSD and PC-BSD teams can collaborate to make a recommended list.


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## scottro (Dec 20, 2014)

That would be nice. Today, I found that a printer I've used in the past seems to have stopped working.   (Although I don't know if it was ever on the list, in some of the 9.x installs I've done, it worked out of the box with some foomatic stuff.   I've seen posts by Oko  (wow, wblock@ was right, put an @ in front of a name and it _does_ autocomplete), mentioning that the foomatic stuff was broken, but printing is one of those things that I do so infrequently, that it's just easier to use some Linux or another to print. 

However, it's difficult in some ways--for example, in the mid 2000's, I think, it was pretty easy to google a bit and find out what wireless card a laptop had.  These days, it's somewhat difficult.  That's just one example.   Often, it seems to me, that when purchasing things for the home, as opposed to servers, they'll often say things such as N wireless, high quality video, and the like, rather than giving the model number of the wireless and video cards.


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## Oko (Dec 20, 2014)

getopt said:


> Oooh! No business for Santa Clause this year ...
> still awaiting a printer manufacturer comes up with an 100% compatible BSD-printer.


I would imagine that at least during the holidays people have better things to do than hanging on forums and writing random garbage about the things they are clueless. For the record I am at work today and the whole day tomorrow.


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## BSDBernd (Dec 20, 2014)

Remington said:


> I think that's something FreeBSD and PC-BSD teams can collaborate to make a recommended list.



There seems to be a Hardware recommendation page, and it looks like an official one:

https://www.freebsd.org/commercial/hardware.html

I am no administrator and not interested in running lots of servers. I come from the Mac World and love the BSD-way when it comes to OSes. I dream of the ability of FreeBSD to beat the hell out of Linux when it comes to Laptops and Tablets. Since Jordan Hubbards talk recently, I dream of FreeBSD focussing also on these things.


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## TheDreamer (Dec 21, 2014)

Almost exactly 4 years ago (Dec, 2010), I bought my newest new computer.  An HP tower with a Core i7-870....preloaded with Windows 7 (to replace my aging P-II 3.2Ghz Dell tower running Win98)....after a couple of near death experiences with it, it patched itself into oblivion on Valentine's Day in 2012.  A Dell tower at work did the same thing a few months later.....always wondered about its Intel Matrix RAID and its need to 'initialize' anytime the system didn't shutdown properly.....due to BSOD.

I decided that I would wait for Ubuntu 12.04LTS to drop and try that....install...run for a bit, panic, panic, panic.  reinstall, run for a bit, panic, panic, panic.  Wonder if I want to wait for 12.04.1 to appear. (a couple years earlier I had jumped the gun on upgrading from 8.04LTS to 10.04LTS, and my mirrored system disks couldn't be detected anymore.  A bug was that fixed two weeks later.  (otherwise, I hadn't any issues with the software raid that I had been doing with Ubuntu....)  As, I recall the problem had something to do with whether you had made a PV using the MD, or if you had created a partition of type PV on the MD first....and was only an issue for the boot one (since that was the only one I lost.)

Had heard they weren't going to offer upgrading older LTS systems until the first update dropped.

So, decided to check out all the buzz about FreeBSD 9.0...I at least had a running system and I already knew ZFS since we were a Solaris shop at work, it did take a little over a month before I got a desktop but well before the 3 years were up on my 10.04LTS system.

But, then x11/gnome2 disappeared....and finally got x11/gnome3 to build on the 11th, and just barely have a desktop again now....(now trying to figure out the new hal-less xorg-server....)

Later when 12.04.1 did come out, I was on a kick to use CFEngine to manage configurations of my home systems, I got to thinking about whether how much I wanted to write policy/promises for how things are on the Ubuntu servers or to recreate those services (DNS, DHCP, NTP, Radius, etc.) elsewhere....I had been collecting parts to complete an SFF server, which I ended up with some extra bits and decided to see if could make two instead....was apparently too hard to run Windows 7 on these dual core atoms....recommendations were to buy MacMini's and run Windows 7 for the digital signs....  if the box had at least two NICs on it, I'd be using it for something else, hopefully someday a box or two of that will appear.... so instead of document/promise what I have and the upgrade, or upgrade and cross my fingers....I went with door number 3, and built two headless FreeBSD servers and promised into existence the services on these systems, gradually displacing the old Ubuntu systems.

I didn't get everything done, but enough....when one Ubuntu server died.  I later killed the other one by harvesting its powersupply for my FreeBSD desktop....

This leaves on last Ubuntu desktop (actually, xubuntu), which was originally an impulse acquisition of an off-lease Win98 desktop after a tower of empty pop cans fell over (earthquake) and I joined the QuakeCatcherNetwork....only to find that the sensor only had Windows drivers for it.  Linux support came later.  The sensor for Radioactive@Home is now also on this computer.

Though I do have a small 12.04LTS headless server, which does three things....runs chrome service, so I can continue to do cloud printing (used to work in chromium....), to run Dropbox (with NFS and Samba exports), and to do local github-pages processing.  No USB ports on this, but had thought about finding something that did to see about using usbip to present USB2.0 to VirtualBox VMs on FreeBSD, ended up getting a Silex SX-DS-4000.  Undecided on upgrading to 14.04LTS....

But, first...need to figure out upgrading all my FreeBSD systems since 9.1 and 9.2 EOL soon.

Oh yeah...I have/had an Ubuntu laptop....that I'm in need of replacing, and have been wondering whether FreeBSD would work on there.  Though chromium not support NPAPI anymore has also been reducing the appeal of having a FreeBSD DE anywhere....  Might be time that I finally see what these Mac's can do....

Also, heard that the issue with 12.04LTS when it first dropped was the kernel didn't like systems with graphics cards with 2G or more of memory.  The HP had come with a GT-420 with 2G of memory. (had since replaced it with a Quadro X1700, to solve the hanging the system on logging out of X or attempting a vt-switch....had tried AMD cards, got instant reboot for those events instead....)

The Dreamer


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## wblock@ (Dec 21, 2014)

This thread has drifted quite a bit.  I'm going to close it for now, and encourage people to start new threads with titles that are somewhat related to the contents.  Thanks!


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