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FreebSD grapical Installer
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[t]csh(1) - "An elegant shell, for a more... civilized age." - Paraphrasing Star Wars (tvtropes.org) |
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What FreeBSD 'needs' is a means to install a basic GUI desktop...NetBSD & OpenBSD have that option, even though they use relatively old looking window managers.
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Linux since 1999, & also a BSD user. |
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"Although unlikely, I hope OpenBSD, too, can perhaps consider making some minor affordances to desktop users"
God I hope they don't change the installer. What could possibly be easier then smashing the enter key a few times, creating a user account, host name and rebooting. |
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Unlike OpenBSD, for example, FreeBSD provides x server in ports/packages, rather than as part of the base system. I'm not sure where things stand on base system components (i.e. an installer) depending on components in the ports tree (pre-compiled packages in this case). That could be a mess. OpenBSD has their own x server build system (xenocara) and it is integrated into the base system along with a simple, licence compliant, window manager. For users who want a "ready to run" desktop, there are a plethora of alternatives and even FreeBSD derivatives such as GhostBSD. |
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FreeBSD can be a nightmare to get a basic GUI up & running, unless something drastic has happened since the last time I looked at doing so, that's one of the reasons I stick to using Open &/or Net.
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Linux since 1999, & also a BSD user. |
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Installing a desktop environment
The FreeBSD ports collection includes what's probably the best-known solution:
sysutils/desktop-installer |
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Changes to the installer
I'm delighted to note that it's too late to grant your wish. From the most recent status report for the work:
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To me the rationale for this makes little sense, and smacks of marketing:
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Why should FreeBSD reinvent the Linux desktop distro wheel, instead of just continuing to do what it does best? I would like to know who has had trouble with the standard FreeBSD installation process (bsdinstall) and if they think that trouble could have been avoided by use of a graphical installer? |
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"Although unlikely, I hope OpenBSD, too, can perhaps consider making some minor affordances to desktop users"
I said that in reference to OpenBSD making changes as well. Apologies for the confusion. Regarding FreeBSD meh... I don't interact with it often enough to care. |
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Linux since 1999, & also a BSD user. |
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But afterwards it dropped me in a shell and that's where things got hard. This was when you still had to have a /etc/X11.conf file run "X -configure" to create it (or whatever the file path and command was). I just had one computer and while I kind of knew how commandlines worked, I didn't really know anything about Unix, Window Managers, or any of that, and the X configure thing asked me scary "your monitor might break if you choose the wrong values!"-questions. The key missing bit for a teenage n00b like me was a "install and start Gnome by default" button, or something to that effect. Today it's a bit easier, but still... Whether it's "graphical" or "text-based" is a bit of a red herring. Anyway, I used Mandrake Linux for a while. That broke on an upgrade, after which I tried FreeBSD again. And using Mandrake taught me enough to get started with FreeBSD. |
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freebsd install gui |
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