Notice I said for me, nor state that FreeBSD "sucks"
I have tried in vain to get a functional installation of some version of FreeBSD. I have tried FreeBSD, PCBSD, Dragonfly, Midnight, NetBSD, and GhostBSD. I am perfectly capable and willing to use the command line, as I have been doing since my first Commodore 64 computer. I have several years of experience with Linux, OS X, and iRix.
Here is what I want to do:
Install FreeBSD amd64, or a variant of it with a graphical interface.
I tried FreeBSD 10.2, which installed and booted fine. But when I tried to follow the instructions for getting X installed things just didn't work, as in the system would just complain about not being able to find the repository for the pkg(8); even if I tried the port form the local source. Strike one.
I tried PCBSD, which looked like it was installing fine. But when I plugged in my USB wireless adapter the system got broke. It crashed and upon boot up it would hang when trying to initialize the network adapters. Removing the USB wireless adapter with the computer power off made things worse. Strike 2
I tried Dragonfly. I was able to get it installed and configured to have a graphical interface, ONCE. Upon rebooting it stayed at the cli and refused to launch the GUI. Strike 3
I tried NetBSD. It installed, but complained about not being able to find repositories, and missing files. Strike 4
I tried Midnight, same as NetBSD. Strike 5
Finally, I installed GhostBSD with XFCE. It installed and worked great. Until I used Octopkg to install Kicad. All of a sudden, several programs wouldn't launch because of an our dated SQLite. Octopkg would not launch from the menu or a terminal, even with the root account. Running pkg from a CLI only resulted in complaints about missing files and not being able to find repositories. Strike 6
I realize that this is a forum about FreeBSD, and that the other variants have their own forums. But the common thread amongst all these problems is that what should be a simple, straight forward process isn't. As I stated I can use a CLI to get things installed and running. But only if the instructions in the handbook actually work. If the handbook for FreeBSD states to install Xorg:
OR
I cut and pasted the lines into a shell as root, not including the # of course, and the installation failed almost immediately because of missing files and inability to fetch the files because the repository URL couldn't be resolved. I could understand this I was trying to install an old release, but this happened with FreeBSD 10.2 on a blank hard drive
All of the other attempts were made with new partition tables and partitions, including the boot sector being overwritten.
I also realize that the people who support FreeBSD and the other variants get paid very little if anything for their efforts. Most of them have real jobs, families, friends, other hobbies, etc. So, I can't really complain.
Usually, post like this get responses suggesting to read this or learn that. That the poster should search the forums and internet for solutions (which I did). To install this or configure that. This is precisely my point; this is too much hassle for me. I wanted to try FreeBSD because I wanted more security than Linux. A brand new installation shouldn't need that much work just get it up and running. I have installed OS X and Linux literally hundreds of times. None of them have been this much work (not that OS X is much of a challenge to get installed).
Thanks for letting vent, I really hoped FreeBSD was going to work out. I know it has for many people, I am just not one of them.
I have tried in vain to get a functional installation of some version of FreeBSD. I have tried FreeBSD, PCBSD, Dragonfly, Midnight, NetBSD, and GhostBSD. I am perfectly capable and willing to use the command line, as I have been doing since my first Commodore 64 computer. I have several years of experience with Linux, OS X, and iRix.
Here is what I want to do:
Install FreeBSD amd64, or a variant of it with a graphical interface.
I tried FreeBSD 10.2, which installed and booted fine. But when I tried to follow the instructions for getting X installed things just didn't work, as in the system would just complain about not being able to find the repository for the pkg(8); even if I tried the port form the local source. Strike one.
I tried PCBSD, which looked like it was installing fine. But when I plugged in my USB wireless adapter the system got broke. It crashed and upon boot up it would hang when trying to initialize the network adapters. Removing the USB wireless adapter with the computer power off made things worse. Strike 2
I tried Dragonfly. I was able to get it installed and configured to have a graphical interface, ONCE. Upon rebooting it stayed at the cli and refused to launch the GUI. Strike 3
I tried NetBSD. It installed, but complained about not being able to find repositories, and missing files. Strike 4
I tried Midnight, same as NetBSD. Strike 5
Finally, I installed GhostBSD with XFCE. It installed and worked great. Until I used Octopkg to install Kicad. All of a sudden, several programs wouldn't launch because of an our dated SQLite. Octopkg would not launch from the menu or a terminal, even with the root account. Running pkg from a CLI only resulted in complaints about missing files and not being able to find repositories. Strike 6
I realize that this is a forum about FreeBSD, and that the other variants have their own forums. But the common thread amongst all these problems is that what should be a simple, straight forward process isn't. As I stated I can use a CLI to get things installed and running. But only if the instructions in the handbook actually work. If the handbook for FreeBSD states to install Xorg:
Code:
# cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg
# make install clean
OR
# pkg install xorg
I cut and pasted the lines into a shell as root, not including the # of course, and the installation failed almost immediately because of missing files and inability to fetch the files because the repository URL couldn't be resolved. I could understand this I was trying to install an old release, but this happened with FreeBSD 10.2 on a blank hard drive
All of the other attempts were made with new partition tables and partitions, including the boot sector being overwritten.
I also realize that the people who support FreeBSD and the other variants get paid very little if anything for their efforts. Most of them have real jobs, families, friends, other hobbies, etc. So, I can't really complain.
Usually, post like this get responses suggesting to read this or learn that. That the poster should search the forums and internet for solutions (which I did). To install this or configure that. This is precisely my point; this is too much hassle for me. I wanted to try FreeBSD because I wanted more security than Linux. A brand new installation shouldn't need that much work just get it up and running. I have installed OS X and Linux literally hundreds of times. None of them have been this much work (not that OS X is much of a challenge to get installed).
Thanks for letting vent, I really hoped FreeBSD was going to work out. I know it has for many people, I am just not one of them.