# DesktopBSD (FreeBSD7.x) installation/upgrade/help!



## onederer (May 6, 2010)

Greetings!

After receiving my replacement 1TB internal hard drive, and the USB external hard drive adapter (toaster),  to try it out, I installed Desktop BSD (not supported anymore, but upgradable by FreeBSD).  The BSD ran fine.  I updated it (it took three days! Most of the packages were compiled instead of picking up BINARY packages). I then installed the applications that were needed (lots of compilation).  From that point, I decided to "upgrade" the entire BSD OS.  Again, three days passed by.  But when I booted up BSD again, everything came up as usual, and I saw the KDE desktop quickly pop in and disappeared just as fast.  I was left with  the tool bar at the bottom, which seemed to be fully functional.  Applications will work, but there is no desktop (wallpaper), and some applications will not work anymore.

I am really looking for a cure, since unlike Linux with ready-made binary packages, BSD does it more like Gentoo Linux, and compiles from scratch, most of the applications, or updates, or upgrades.  And that takes a very long time! I'd hate to have to re-install that OS from the beginning again. I really need to get KDE back up and running again.  If not, I'll have to dump that fine OS because of a lot of lost time due to compilations.

Anyone know how to revive KDE to a healthy form again?  :q

Cheers!


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## expl (May 6, 2010)

Why not just use PC-BSD?


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## ptempel (May 6, 2010)

I see a lot of kde 4 packages available for FreeBSD.  Check here:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-7.3-release/kde/

and give pkg_add a try on some of them.  Kde 4.3.5 should be on the FreeBSD 7.3 DVD image.  I haven't installed it yet but did see it on the menus when I installed Gnome 2.28.


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## onederer (May 6, 2010)

*Reply to your question, "why not PCBsd?"*



			
				expl said:
			
		

> Why not just use PC-BSD?



You asked me, and I'll tell you no lies. 

I initially tried PC-BSD before their latest release. The prior release had a lot of quirks, and was difficult to setup and handle. I went several times to the PC-BSD forums.  I never could get a direct answer pertinent to my question(s). Their consensus was that people who use a GUI front-end, are wimps.  And mostly I got nothing but hostility as a response to my enquiries.  Not very condusive to a constructive conclusion. I left their site, and discovered Desktop-BSD.

After installing Desktop-BSD, I discovered that it was quite trouble-free! Wireless networking was a breeze to setup. It worked right away. A lot of attention was paid to details before releasing the last version.  It is a very well polished BSD front end, which has had quite a lot more proven mileage ahead of PC-BSD, before being abandoned Sept. of 2009.  Thanks to FREE-BSD, even though the GUI front-end will always stay the same, the entire OS can always be upgraded via FREE-BSD. So I can't complain on how this OS version performs.  And it is so much easier to get help and information than the "other" graphic oriented BSD.

Cheers!


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## onederer (May 6, 2010)

*That's good about other versions of KDE, but doesn't make the "now"problem go away.*



			
				ptempel said:
			
		

> I see a lot of kde 4 packages available for FreeBSD.  Check here:
> 
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-7.3-release/kde/
> 
> and give pkg_add a try on some of them.  Kde 4.3.5 should be on the FreeBSD 7.3 DVD image.  I haven't installed it yet but did see it on the menus when I installed Gnome 2.28.



I'm inclined to believe that if I were to install a different version of KDE at the moment, I would still experience a very disappointing and similar occurance of the current problem.
Until I find out the cause of the present problem, and be able to control it, I suspect that it would continue to haunt me.

I therefore came on this website to find the root cause of what's causing this "thing" to occur. I know that somewhere in the background, KDE still lurks.  I can see it coming up when the OS is starting up.  But only for a very brief moment, and then, poof!  It's gone.  The screen goes dark, all the icons disappear.  It is impossible to attach application icons to the screen. All that's left is the tool bar in the bottom of the screen. For the most part, many of the applications still work from the tool bar, but not KDE.

I made the drastic error of trying to upgrade the entire OS. And somewhere in that upgrade, something is running that makes the KDE desktop collapse, and disappear. And based on the fact that it takes so very long to 'update' or 'upgrade' DESKTOP-BSD (due to lengthy compilations of various applications), I'm sort of losing my patience at not being able to use this machine for around 3 days while it is 'updating' or 'upgrading'. I figure that if a cure for present problem is found, it will save me many days of starting from scratch all over again.  And if I have to start over, perhaps I'll have to use some version of Linux, again. At least updates or upgrades last at most, only a few hours, or just a few minutes.


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## roddierod (May 6, 2010)

You'd need to provide some detail error messages. Saying you don't get a wallpaper doesn't sound like a error (outside of you not going into the KDE settings and setting the wallpaper). KDE sounds to be running to me if you have the task bar.

You say some apps don't work? What apps? What kind of error do you get? Did you try and start the app from an xterm to see if any errors.


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## davidgurvich (May 6, 2010)

The last version of desktopbsd used kde-3.5.10 and fbsd72.  If you try and upgrade something that depends on kde you are very likely to pull in kde4 packages and ruin your entire kde3 setup.  If that's what happened the fastest and easiest solution is to backup your home directory and reinstall desktopbsd.

That shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes using the DVD image.  Binary packages can be added with pkg_add -r PACKAGE but be careful on what is pulled in.  The kde install is very susceptible to breakage when a supporting library is upgraded.


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## ptempel (May 6, 2010)

I agree with davidgurvich's post above to reinstall.  But if it were me, I'd reinstall with FreeBSD 7.3 DVD and install KDE 4.3.5 and be done with it.  Sure, there will be more config items than DesktopBSD or PC-BSD, but I don't really think its that bad.  Maybe I just like to turn more knobs and dials...


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## onederer (May 8, 2010)

*Latest findings.*



			
				davidgurvich said:
			
		

> The last version of desktopbsd used kde-3.5.10 and fbsd72.  If you try and upgrade something that depends on kde you are very likely to pull in kde4 packages and ruin your entire kde3 setup.  If that's what happened the fastest and easiest solution is to backup your home directory and reinstall desktopbsd.
> 
> That shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes using the DVD image.  Binary packages can be added with pkg_add -r PACKAGE but be careful on what is pulled in.  The kde install is very susceptible to breakage when a supporting library is upgraded.



It seems that the KDE packages that I downloaded, provided me with a selection of wallpapers.  However, I still can't make any icons stick to the desktop.  And I get no error messages.  I'm not sure what you mean by fbsd72. Could you explain it's function?  That's one thing that I don't look forward to is reinstalling desktopbsd.  It sure takes a very long time after the installation, for the updates do get compiled!  80% compilation, and 20% binary packages!  Three days that I can't use this machine.

Oh, I logged in as a different user, and the desktop came up normally. So whatever it is pertains only to the first user's account. There is a file in there that's preventing from KDE to become fully active.  However, KDE applications (the ones that I tried,anyway) seem to run. I have to start them from the tool bar, and the popup menu.

Cheers!


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## onederer (May 8, 2010)

ptempel said:
			
		

> I agree with davidgurvich's post above to reinstall.  But if it were me, I'd reinstall with FreeBSD 7.3 DVD and install KDE 4.3.5 and be done with it.  Sure, there will be more config items than DesktopBSD or PC-BSD, but I don't really think its that bad.  Maybe I just like to turn more knobs and dials...



Well, as I get older, my patience gets shorter. I'm looking forward to becoming a user instead of an OS mechanic. My fingers are getting stiffer, and furious typing isn't easy anymore. That's why I like the GUI environment of desktopbsd. 

I'm sorry, but I'm not that familiar with Free-BSD itself. Am I to understand that most of the things have to be done via the keyboard?  Free-BSD doesn't have a front-end GUI does it?  Currently, it is my perception that most things have to be done the hard way via the keyboard. Am I wrong? That's a lot of finger work compared to a one-click gui application.

Based on your knowledge, the DesktopBSD is currently based on FreeBSD 7.2.  Any way to keep the GUI front end, and upgrade the OS to say like FreeBSD 8.x?  Or is the GUI too far entangled with the OS, so that's impossible?  Before my upgrading, things worked like silk.

Thank you for your come-back.

Cheers!


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## davidgurvich (May 8, 2010)

DesktopBSD isn't currently being updated and there have been significant changes in how some underlying features work between 7.X and 8.X.  I don't think modifications to the tools would be too difficult in order to work with 8.0 but there isn't a lot of interest in doing so.  The GUI is almost an afterthought in FreeBSD and isn't well integrated with the rest of the system.


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