Is desktop-installer good for a newbie ?

sudobsd

sudobsd

Hello, as a newbie who wants to jump in the FreeBSD world, i wanted to know if desktop-installer is good for quickly install a DE and quickly configure the system.


Thanks !
 
I never used it. Assuming it works as advertised, it is
  • "good" as you will quickly have the DE you want up and running.
  • "not good" as you won't learn how the things work on FreeBSD.
So, it's ultimately your choice what you consider more important.
 
Yeah you right, i guess i could try desktop-installer, but its kinda bad since i won't learn a lot about how to install DEs in FreeBSD.
 
Last time I looked at it it worked pretty good, but that was on a pretty generic system with Intel graphics. But as pointed out it's not really that hard to install something. There are meta-packages for most of the popular DEs (KDE5, gnome) and lots of choices for old fashioned window managers.
 
Ah ok i'll try, right now im having troubles with GRUB detecting FreeBSD on EndeavourOS.
 
Did you consider virtualization instead of multi-booting? Then you could use FreeBSD's native bootloader instead of grub, which is a lot easier.

It of course depends on your usecase. But if you have one "main" OS (which you use most of the time), and one other you need for experimenting or for compatibility with some specific application etc ... it can often make sense to just install the "main" OS on the bare metal and the other one in a virtual machine...
 
If you can/will share your hardware: motherboard (is it UEFI capable*?), CPU & hdd(s) perhaps the forum community can give you better specific advice as to viable options. In the end you can make your own informed choice. Depending on the CPU, 4GB is quite adequate for a FreeBSD OS with a (non-overloaded) DE; however—if possible—an extra 4GB will give you a lot more options.

___
* that could ease your booting install options.
 
zirias@ said:
Did you consider virtualization instead of multi-booting? Then you could use FreeBSD's native bootloader instead of grub, which is a lot easier.

It of course depends on your usecase. But if you have one "main" OS (which you use most of the time), and one other you need for experimenting or for compatibility with some specific application etc ... it can often make sense to just install the "main" OS on the bare metal and the other one in a virtual machine...
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In my case the host os i windows 10 Professional as I have 32gb of ram and Windows 10Home restricts you to a poultry 16GB of ram maximum. As for the Virtualization aspect of the equation I use Vm Ware Workstation, although prior to purchasing Vmware Workstation I was using Oracle Virtual box.
 
I have used desktop-installer numerous times to install a DE for desktop systems. I have had very positive experiences with it installing XFCE or Mate. The one time I tried Cinnamon, the system was not usable afterwards - but Cinnamon on FreeBSD was very outdated at that point in time, it might be better now.

Update Oct 24, 2022: at least for XFCE, desktop-installer also works on remote, headless installations (once you got a bootable FreeBSD base system, e.g. by using mfsBSD). You would need to install/cofigure XRDP manually after running desktop-installer.
 
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I set up my first FreeBSD desktop this past January and hadn't found desktop-installer in all my googling; thanks for asking about it here.

For what it's worth, the FreeBSD Foundation has a tutorial called Installing a Desktop Environment on FreeBSD that takes you through the installation and configuration of XFCE. It was straightforward for me, and since you report having experience with Linux, it might work for you, too. I just worked through it after doing a fresh install of 13.0.
 
darmokandjalad said:
I set up my first FreeBSD desktop this past January and hadn't found desktop-installer in all my googling; thanks for asking about it here.

For what it's worth, the FreeBSD Foundation has a tutorial called Installing a Desktop Environment on FreeBSD that takes you through the installation and configuration of XFCE. It was straightforward for me, and since you report having experience with Linux, it might work for you, too. I just worked through it after doing a fresh install of 13.0.
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Sorry, for the very late respond, but thank you for that, i'm gonna try it tommorow while fiddling with nvidia drivers (as im using an new computer right now, while i've learned how to use FreeBSD correctly some month after this post.)
 
_al said:
Before removing FreeBSD from your HP-Notebook, try editing /etc/default/grub as mentioned in post 82
forums.freebsd.org

Dual booting Linux and FreeBSD on a single drive

No, its not mounted
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org
This was my fault - I didn't pay attention that GRUB_TIMEOUT=0 (which is causing Linux to boot immediately without any choice).
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I've read that if you have timeout set to zero, you can still get to the grub menu by holding down the [SHIFT] key after turning the computer on, or while rebooting it. I've never tested this. I normally set the timeout to 5 seconds.

I've spent a lot of time messing around with grub when I didn't yet know about rEFInd, time which might have better been spent on other things. I think rEFInd is probably a better option for a beginner.
 
Vull said:
I've read that if you have timeout set to zero, you can still get to the grub menu by holding down the [SHIFT] key after turning the computer on, or while rebooting it. I've never tested this. I normally set the timeout to 5 seconds.

I've spent a lot of time messing around with grub when I didn't yet know about rEFInd, time which might have better been spent on other things. I think rEFInd is probably a better option for a beginner.
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Might be, even though i remember making GRUB finally detecting the FreeBSD boot manager.
By making my own config file iirc, i actually forgot.
 
meaw229a said:
Just install reFind on your Linux OS and forget about grub. Works very well !
reFind should be in your distribution repo.
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Now, stupid old me, who didn't saw this message, but its worth the try, and also should i dualboot FreeBSD on my SSD or my external hard drive, the issue with the HDD is that there already a lot of stuff i don't wanna lose.
 
sudobsd said:
Hello, as a newbie who wants to jump in the FreeBSD world, i wanted to know if desktop-installer is good for quickly install a DE and quickly configure the system.


Thanks !
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No. It is not good for newbie. But it is just my opinion...
 
sudobsd said:
Hello, as a newbie who wants to jump in the FreeBSD world, i wanted to know if desktop-installer is good for quickly install a DE and quickly configure the system.


Thanks !
Click to expand...
The stock FreeBSD installer is dead simple to use. I suggest that you use the FreeBSD Handbook to guide your first installation of FreeBSD; the documentation is second to none. You'll need to install a text editor, perhaps nano or vim. Good is a relative, meaningless term. If you want to learn a little bit about FreeBSD use the stock installation program and the FreeBSD Handbook.
 
I want to add my 5 kopeek (a penny - from Russian), today when generate new desktop for myself, use sysutils/desktop-installer for that, instead of manual installing ports and edit configs... So my feelings are this very simple and useful!

I'm install IceWM desktop in less that 1 hour, and all works out of the box. So I think this is a good not for newbies, but for those who doesn't want to do many hand actions, or have not much time for that.

P.S. And I'm absolutely agree with hitest, if You want to learn more about something, don't use things which simplified actions by hiding low level gears.
 
I found the installer to be equally as good as, if not better, than the Anaconda installer used by Fedora. I also thought the light color of the installer was a great choice.

The handbook is amazingly detailed. As a new user I was able to jump right in and have my system installed how I wanted it in very little time.

However, you will have only a CLI on first boot. You will need to do some reading and make decisions about what graphical interface and backend you would like to use. The handbook makes the set up process very simple.

The only issue I ran into was vi. I have a 60% keyboard on the system I am using and have no idea where my insert key is. So I did install nano for doing some tasks.
 
hitest said:
The stock FreeBSD installer is dead simple to use.
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Just for clarification, desktop-installer doesn't replace it. It's just some automation script to install the packages required for different desktop environments and do some basic configuration.

Nevertheless I agree, just use the handbook. Benefit, you will learn a bit about how the system works.

LibreQuest said:
The only issue I ran into was vi. I have a 60% keyboard on the system I am using and have no idea where my insert key is.
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Uhm? But, not needing any "special" keys (except for escape) is one of vi's design principles? From normal mode, hit i to get to insert mode, or : to get to command mode. From insert mode, hit Esc to get back to normal mode ... 🤷‍♂️ (Even cursor movement doesn't need cursor keys, can be done with h, j, k and l)
 
zirias@ said:
Just for clarification, desktop-installer doesn't replace it. It's just some automation script to install the packages required for different desktop environments and do some basic configuration.

Nevertheless I agree, just use the handbook. Benefit, you will learn a bit about how the system works.


Uhm? But, not needing any "special" keys (except for escape) is one of vi's design principles? From normal mode, hit i to get to insert mode, or : to get to command mode. From insert mode, hit Esc to get back to normal mode ... 🤷‍♂️ (Even cursor movement doesn't need cursor keys, can be done with h, j, k and l)
Click to expand...
Unbelievably simple. I have been using nano for so long that I forgot how to use vi. The last time I used it was setting up an old gaming lan for Loki Linux games. The systems were based on the old 2.2.17 kernel from October 2000. That's been a couple of years. Thanks!
 
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