# problems installing desktop software



## estex198 (May 4, 2009)

Not very experienced with FreeBSD 7.1. I'm a comfortable Arch user though. I'm using FreeBSD 7.1 because I like the idea of clean, well documented code. My problems so far have been with the AMD 64 distro. The following is a list of issues I'm trying to deal with.

1. When installing desktop software from ports I seem to run into a wall every time. Mostly I'll see warnings like this:

 - Package foo depends on package bar-X.X.X but bar-X.Y.Y is installed.
 Q. What does this mean? Am I only being warned? I used the -F option to ignore these warnings. Was this the correct procedure?

 - Package foo-X.X.X cannot be found
 Q. Generally I'll search the web and install it or find the package in the ports directory and install it from there. This is how I got gnome to install (eventually.)

 - gui is incredulously slow. 
 Q. I'm a bit skeptical about this because God knows I merely winged the xorg setup. I don't even know what video driver (or is it module? Synonymous?) I'm currently using. Probably some POS generic module. At any rate I'm sure this POS generic module could at least be tuned *correctly to perform well. Compilation time in the console is low so I doubt the bottleneck is anything but the current x setup.

 - nvidia drivers
 Q. I couldn't find any 64 bit binary packages on nvidias website. I'm assuming this is because they do not exist. How complicated a procedure would it be to install the 64 bit linux binaries?


Anyone know of legible (from a layman perspective) documentation concerning erroneous ports/package installations? Maybe some good threads concerning this issue. I'm not even sure how to define these problems without describing them in detail. Thanks a lot for your time!

 - Rusty


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## tangram (May 4, 2009)

estex198 said:
			
		

> 1. When installing desktop software from ports I seem to run into a wall every time. Mostly I'll see warnings like this:
> 
> - Package foo depends on package bar-X.X.X but bar-X.Y.Y is installed.
> Q. What does this mean? Am I only being warned? I used the -F option to ignore these warnings. Was this the correct procedure?



My guess is that you are using both packages and ports. Imho choose and stick with it.



> - Package foo-X.X.X cannot be found
> Q. Generally I'll search the web and install it or find the package in the ports directory and install it from there. This is how I got gnome to install (eventually.)



What is the question exactly? How to find ports? If so have a look at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/ports-finding-applications.html.



> - gui is incredulously slow.
> Q. I'm a bit skeptical about this because God knows I merely winged the xorg setup. I don't even know what video driver (or is it module? Synonymous?) I'm currently using. Probably some POS generic module. At any rate I'm sure this POS generic module could at least be tuned *correctly to perform well. Compilation time in the console is low so I doubt the bottleneck is anything but the current x setup.



Again what is the exact issue here?



> - nvidia drivers
> Q. I couldn't find any 64 bit binary packages on nvidias website. I'm assuming this is because they do not exist. How complicated a procedure would it be to install the 64 bit linux binaries?



There aren't any 64bit NVIDIA drivers for FreeBSD. There is however the opensource nv driver, though 3d acceleration is light years away from the NVIDIA's closed driver.

If you are interested in the 1386 install procedure have a look at this HOWTO: Install and configure NVIDIA drivers. 



> Anyone know of legible (from a layman perspective) documentation concerning erroneous ports/package installations? Maybe some good threads concerning this issue. I'm not even sure how to define these problems without describing them in detail.


Get accquainted with FreeBSD Documentation namely the Handbook and the FAQs.



> Thanks a lot for your time!


Welcome aboard .


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## SirDice (May 4, 2009)

estex198 said:
			
		

> - nvidia drivers
> Q. I couldn't find any 64 bit binary packages on nvidias website. I'm assuming this is because they do not exist.


Correct, they don't exist. The reasons are outlined here:
http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests



> How complicated a procedure would it be to install the 64 bit linux binaries?


It's not complicated, it's simply not possible.

Unless you have more then 3GB of memory I'd suggest installing the i386 version of fbsd.


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