On 9/11/06, Bob Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi, I have always wanted to better understand Unix, and so I finally made the decision to switch some of my office PCs over to either a Unix or Linux system. With office suites like OpenOffice, I felt that I would be able to transition away from Windows with minimal disruption to my business. So, I downloaded the .iso images from FreeBSD, Suse, and Fedora. I initially favored FreeBSD, since it seemed to have the closest lineage to "pure" Unix, and that was important to me, but after many, many attempts to install both the OS and Gnome desktop environment, I threw up my hands. In brief, the installation process is just awful. After multiple attempts on an admittedly older machine (Pentium II 266Mhz, 256KB ram, 30GB hard drive, S3 Virge graphics card), I was able to get the FreeBSD OS installed, but could not configure Gnome or KDE properly. The documentation is sketchy at best. I had to learn about X11, Xorg, XFree86, and all of the gory history of X before I could even begin to use ee and know to edit the /etc/rc.conf file. The installation process did not recognize my graphics card or Ethernet connection, and all I could get was a crude 600x800 display. And DesktopBSD was even worse. I then repartitioned my drive and sequentially installed Fedora Core 5 amd then Suse 10.1. Both were EASY to install, Fedora in particular recognized all of my peripherals, and I was up and running with it in about two hours. Conversely, FreeBSD took me multiple days and has still left me bewildered. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I feel that FreeBSD will never achieve broader acceptance (even with momentum building for alternative OS) among people with modest technical proficiency and fairly simple requirements (i.e., spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, email). FreeBSD has an awful "out of the box" experience. It's too bad, because I think FreeBSD is probably a better OS, but I'll never really know. Regards,
too bad, you experienced that, the FreeBSD sysinstall is not that really hard, it may seem daunting at first because of its text mode but it is very straight forward, i guess you have to read the handbook over and over again to fully comprehend the things you missed why things like X is not working, it will also help if you will include the error messages as to why you can't run/install gnome or kde. imo you missed some dependencies that's why you're having a hard time. _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
