FreeBSD 10-BETA3 as a newbie

N

netik

Hi all,

After many years of just using Windows, I decided to give Linux or FreeBSD another try. As I was very happy with the stability of FreeBSD, I choose it over Linux again.

As my notebook is quite new, the first problem was that there are no drivers for my WLAN adapter in FreeBSD 9.2 yet, so I have to use the Beta 3 of FreeBSD 10, so that at least the third external USB WLAN adapter I bought, is working now.

But I am so frustrated now that after three days, I still don't have a working system. First, the make of two or three basic ports failed unexpectedly. After typing make install again, it worked. With X finally working, Chromium crashed every ten minutes with "segmentation faults". After getting frustrated with the Openbox themes (that somehow don't apply to Thunar and some other applications), I wanted to install pekwm, which only shows Chinese characters in the menu for no reason.

The make of Eclipse fails and I have no idea how to fix that.

I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. Is FreeBSD 10 Beta 3 really that unstable and not recommended for newbies?
 
According to the FreeBSD Release Engineering article:
The rapid pace of FreeBSD development makes the main development branch unsuitable for the everyday use by the general public. In particular, stabilizing efforts are required for polishing the development system into a production quality release. To solve this conflict, development continues on several parallel tracks. The main development branch is the HEAD or trunk of our Subversion tree, known as “FreeBSD-CURRENT” or “-CURRENT” for short.
Click to expand...

Summarizing, you can use the development branch at your own risk. Obviously, this is manifested on the activity level of the freebsd-current mailing list.
 
Ok, thank you. Then the -CURRENT branch is definitely nothing for me. The question is then - how can I make the USB wireless adapters work? The one with the Realtek chipset is working in FreeBSD 10 without any changes, in FreeBSD 9.2 unfortunately not. Does that mean it won't work for now or is there something I could try?
 
@netik, I'm a newb too. From my experience, I would strongly recommend you use Linux on your new hardware over FreeBSD. It will work with much less headaches, and you won't notice any loss of stability. In fact, because of the hardship one must endure to run FreeBSD on new hardware, you will most likely notice improved stability on Linux.
 
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I personally find BETA3 to be very stable, the ports however seem to be in a little bit of a state of flux (I imagine still due to the migration from gcc to clang). If you are a beginner, you might want to avoid this (I.e running Fedora Rawhide, Debian Sid or other bleeding edge operating systems would probably yield similar results).

My suggestion is to follow the advice on the FreeBSD website and use the release version of FreeBSD (9.2-RELEASE). As for WiFi hardware, I tend to find FreeBSD to pretty decent (often better than Linux). When it doesn't support something, I usually give OpenBSD a shot since usually one of the two main BSDs will support a piece of hardware.

In your case however, I would strongly recommend replacing the WiFi dongle with another one (or the device I mentioned here http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=43120). At least until 10-RELEASE is out. After all, if a specific WiFi dongle didn't work with the latest Windows or Mac OS X (which is often the case), you wouldn't think twice on getting it replaced.
 
So, is it possible to use this driver from HEAD in my FreeBSD 9.2 installation? Otherwise I'll try this USB dongle.
 
netik said:
So, is it possible to use this driver from HEAD in my FreeBSD 9.2 Installation?
Click to expand...

No, in this case, you need to upgrade to the CURRENT branch and try it.
 
cpm said:
No, in this case, you need to upgrade to the CURRENT branch and try it.
Click to expand...
It was definitely working when I had FreeBSD 10 installed. The device in ifconfig was called urtwn0. Too bad.

And what if I just buy a USB wireless adapter that is listed under the 9.2 supported hardware list? They should work shouldn't they?
 
kpedersen said:
In your case however, I would strongly recommend replacing the WiFi dongle with another one (or the device I mentioned here http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=43120). At least until 10-RELEASE is out. After all, if a specific WiFi dongle didn't work with the latest Windows or Mac OS X (which is often the case), you wouldn't think twice on getting it replaced.
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This looks interesting. However, I don't really understand how it's being used. How can I tell it which SSID, encryption and key to use?
 
netik said:
And what if I just buy a USB wireless adapter that is listed under the 9.2 supported hardware list? They should work shouldn't they?
Click to expand...
Yes, they should. But check carefully. Sometimes there will be support for the Yoyodyne Frobulator XYZ123, but not for the Yoyodyne Frobulator XYZ123-GT, for example because the latter uses an entirely different chipset.

As far as I can tell, Atheros and Intel are among the better-supported WiFi cards.
 
fonz said:
Just like you would with a built-in board: through wpa_supplicant(8).
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Ah ok, thank you! However, this device is not an option anymore as they ship it only in the UK.

The problem with these external USB adapters seems to be, that there are different revisions with different chipsets, so in the end, I'll probably have to buy a few more until I find one that is working.
 
netik said:
Ah ok, thank you! However, this device is not an option anymore as they ship it only in the UK.
Click to expand...

Newegg has it through a reseller. There are similar devices, although the reviews of them are not enthusiastic.

The problem with these external USB adapters seems to be, that there are different revisions with different chipsets, so in the end, I'll probably have to buy a few more until I find one that is working.
Click to expand...

Replacing the internal adapter is another option. The difficulty level varies with model and manufacturer of computer.
 
netik said:
The problem with these external USB adapters seems to be, that there are different revisions with different chipsets, so in the end, I'll probably have to buy a few more until I find one that is working.
Click to expand...

My interest in the device is that it doesn't need a driver (so the specific chipset doesn't matter). You just power it up (via a USB port or a USB power charger) and then connect via ethernet. You then connect to a specific IP in a web browser, and configure the WiFi access point name and password via the web interface.

Screenshot of web interface: http://devio.us/~kpedersen/tmp/airpen.png
 
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