# A few questions from a newbie



## Aizawa (Mar 2, 2009)

Okay, so I'm new to FreeBSD. I've tried it in virtual machines before, but now I installed it on my hard drive, without any other OS.

Here goes the questions;

1; Can I use my wireless usb network adaptor (If that's how you spell it) when in the "shell" (If that is the wrong word, I mean the unix-like shell, no DE)
Don't ask why I don't want a desktop environment, I just dont, for now at least.

2; How do I update the ports collection? This is a fresh 7.1 install, I imagine the ports has been updated.

And the last, and probably a stupid question;
Can I sort of "minimize" a program in the shell? As you know, when you start a program you have to exit it to do something else. This isn't a huge issue but I was just wondering.

Thanks in advance!


----------



## hydra (Mar 2, 2009)

First of all, welcome to FreeBSD.

1) Depends on the type, however you should note that the graphical environment is not an integrated part of FreeBSD, Xorg, KDE or GNOME, these are "just" applications that may / may not be present on your system. However, every feature is available from the console as well. The desktop environment is good for several things:
- configuring the system from X (I don't recommend or use this)
- browse, chat, watch movies or whatever (this is what I do with it)

2) Read here:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports.html

3) You can suspend a process by ^Z (ctrl-z), then you can check the jobs with the 'jobs' command. You can either push the program background (with command: 'bg') or bring foreground (with command: 'fg'). 

Read more here:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/basics.html
and some other literature...

Good luck


----------



## Aizawa (Mar 2, 2009)

Thanks a lot!


----------



## gilinko (Mar 2, 2009)

Aizawa said:
			
		

> And the last, and probably a stupid question;
> Can I sort of "minimize" a program in the shell? As you know, when you start a program you have to exit it to do something else. This isn't a huge issue but I was just wondering.



There is a program written for just that thing(and many others). It's called _screen_ and is a very powerfull piece of software, which allows you to in essence have multiple "windows" in the same console and you can switch between them using simple commands. A quick beginners tutorial can be found here: http://news.softpedia.com/news/GNU-Screen-Tutorial-44274.shtml or just google "screen tutorial"


----------



## Djn (Mar 3, 2009)

There's also the tcsh job managment.
If you press Ctrl+Z , you suspend the currently running task. You can then resume it with _fg_ or _bg_ - the latter will put it in the background.

You can list the tasks running in the background with _jobs_.
To bring task 1 to the foreground again, use _%1_ or %cmd , where "cmd" is the name of the running program. See also the tcsh man page - searching for "fg" or "jobs" will probably take you to an interesting part.


----------



## jb_fvwm2 (Mar 3, 2009)

way easier (here at least) just to do another TTYs


----------

