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Old 25th June 2008
Nirbo Nirbo is offline
Real Name: Nicholas Kirby
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nico_h View Post
Hi everyone !

Well I'm still using linux and not completely satisfied with it (lots of crashes and new bugs appear that weren't there before). I want to give a try to FreeBSD as it seems to match what I'm looking for. (I've read throughout this excellent presentation :
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/ )
This resource is rather old, but I've always liked it

Quote:
Originally Posted by nico_h View Post
1°) In the documentation I've seen something about preemption in the kernel (default option) but I haven't found anything about real time. In linux, it's possible to install a real time kernel what's useful to make music. Is it possible in FreeBSD (I guess in this case I have to compile a kernel) ?
I think what you are talking about here is KLM, or Kernel Loadable Modules. This is indeed possible. In the case of sound, a very good article was written by phoenix on BSDForums, and I think one was written in this forum's HOW-TO section by someone else

The gist of KLMs in FreeBSD is kldload/kldunload/kldstat. Read the man pages or google, and it'll still be way easier to understand than if I tried to help with it
Quote:
Originally Posted by nico_h View Post
2°) I guess it shouldn't be a problem to install e17 from CVS...
I wouldn't. CVS installing is a pain when you have the ports tree that is so much better! Point-in-fact: http://www.freshports.org/x11-wm/enlightenment-devel/

There already exists a development port of Enlightenment. IIRC, this negates the need to install from CVS (although you probably still could if you so desired.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by nico_h View Post
3°) The documentation of FreeBSD let me feel it is really really complicated to install and run FreeBSD : is it *that* complicated ? (about hardware identification for example : as long as my hardware is conventionnal, do I really need to get a list of it before starting the installation ?). I know I'm coming from the Linux world and well, there are differences in the commands but is it that difficult to learn ?? I mean, I already have a quite good idea about what a shell is etc. etc. And I expect there are differences, that's no surprise for me.
It is not as complicated as it may seem. It could be, if you really wanted it to be but, in most cases, your hardware is probably supported. And really, the best way to learn is to jump right in and try out your first install.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nico_h View Post
Alright, these are all newbies questions I couldn't figure out the answers in the doc (if there are in the doc, could you give me a hint about where ?)

Thanks for any help & for putting me at rest !


Nicolas
FreeBSD.org has the FreeBSD handbook, and links to a lot of good documentation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nico_h View Post
PS if there are any english errors it's because I'm french

PPS I've found there's no alsa in FreeBSD : isn't it a problem to make music ? Does anyone here use FreeBSD to make music ? (recording, mixing, mastering etc.)
Your English is way better than my French

I don't personally do any music production, but if all else fails, you could run the programs you were using through the linux-compat layer. But I'd suggest checking out http://www.freshports.org which is a pretty awesome resource for seeing what is in the ports tree.
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