Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:57:21 +0100 From: "Steiner, Bernard" <Bernard.Steiner@lahmeyer.de> To: <freebsd-gnome@freebsd.org> Subject: GNOME's newbiew woes and rantings Message-ID: <0E3C8932B8AFFF4294C69ABF71FB23656171C5@ZDEXV001.lahmeyer.com>
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Dear GNOME, I would like to tell you a story about what happens when a seasoned = non-combatant BSD veteran tries and installs GNOME: In the beginning, I got 386bsd release 0.0 which was a pain to install = on an ESDI drive because it only supported one floppy drive and one hard = disk and refused to boot off the ESDI drive. This eventually got patched and 0.1 would let me boot off my beloved = ESDI drive. There were no further patches to 0.1, so eventually I installed FreeBSD = (though I admit that memory fails me as to whether that was 1.X or 2.X). Ever since then have I managed to = upgrade my system from source, so currently it runs 6.3-PRERELEASE (I track -STABLE). The system is now an AMD64 and indeed it runs X11. Sound runs wonderfully, DVD playback works, etc. So I decided now was the time to take a step forward and grabbed GNOME = from ports. This seems to have been a big mistake: There appear to be not many manual pages worth mentioning. Some processes (of which I am not sure what they are supposed to be = doing) seem to grab a CPU and just increase its core temperature as a CPUhog. Some processes SEGV on me straight away (abiword, some screen savers, = and others which I haven't the foggiest idea what they are supposed to = do). The number of *.core files I got since I started on GNOME simply = amazes me. Sometimes the system just freezes. And, yes, it is not just the screen = but also network IO is no longer possible which really bothers me because then my nice gmirror disks are un-synced = and also need an fsck so the next time the system boots it takes about = an hour to get past fsck and gmirror re-sync. I am very unhappy with this. Methinks I am missing something very basic and fundamental here. I just = cannot begin to assume that anybody would even consider using GNOME if = it really were as buggy as that. So I went to have a look at the FreeBSD=B4s GNOME how-to, and I must = admit there's not an awful lot there that might help me get this mess = sorted out. Nor is the GNOME site helpful in any way. Should I re-compile the whole lot with -g -bstatic and start a serious = gdb session ? Where should I start looking ? Thanks (and sorry about the MUA in use at the moment...) Bernard
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