Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1998 07:45:07 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Marty Poulin <mpoulin@honk.org> Cc: newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Installing X Message-ID: <19980606074507.47760@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.980605094600.11554A-100000@mail.honk.org>; from Marty Poulin on Fri, Jun 05, 1998 at 10:16:46AM -0400 References: <Pine.LNX.3.95.980605094600.11554A-100000@mail.honk.org>
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On Fri, Jun 05, 1998 at 10:16:46AM -0400, Marty Poulin wrote: > > I am very new to FreeBSD, and I am wondering if there is a good step-by > step instruction on installing X Window system on FreeBSD? That's an area that could do with more documentation, especially from a newbies perspective. Documentation and support is mostly supplied by the people who provide the X Window System that is bundled with FreeBSD. But one thing that would have helped me is an overview of the procedure. I'll have a go: The first steps are basically: install X, make sure your path includes X (you'll probably see how to change it if you edit your ~/.profile and log in again), run xf86config as root (very carefully! a wrong answer can fry your monitor so run it again if you made a mistake), and then as a humble user type 'startx' and see if it works. Use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to get out of X if you can't see another way. If the screen seems happy, use Ctrl-Alt-+ (that's the plus on the numeric keypad) a few times slowly to see how easy it is to cycle through the available resolutions. Next: you need to install and configure a 'window manager' to make it work nicely. Out of the box it has an old plain window manager called twm but you're sure to want something better. The one called fvwm2 is good to start with (install from the FreeBSD packages collection) and experiment with other ones after the basics are a bit more familiar. Hint: click on the background with different mouse buttons to get menus, including one that'll let you exit gracefully. By now you'll be interested in colour depth as well as resolution, so try changing to something like 'startx -- -bpp 16' to get more colours. Would it help much to have a brief summary like this in the Handbook or FAQ? Raise enough hands and it'll happen. There's a couple of good chapters on setting up X in Greg Lehey's book The Complete FreeBSD, and that's the only place you'll find every detail from installing to making X shine. Get this book if you can. Our Newbies Resources web page (http://www.freebsd.org/newbies.html) has just had a little section on X added. It gets updated every couple of weeks, mostly by *guessing* what info newbies need to find (hint). Please post any feedback on that page to this mailing list. For problems and specific questions, ask freebsd-questions@freebsd.org. There's another web page at http://www.welearn.com.au/freebsd/newbies that explains how to deal with problems that don't solve themselves. > I don't have too much invested in my system right now, so it won't be > too much of a loss to start over. Aaaarrggghh! That's what I said too :-( I reinstalled about six times in the first week trying to get things right. WRONG! Once it's installed and booting you're fine. Even the silliest goofs can be fixed from there, with a little help from the FAQ, Handbook, man pages if you're desperate, and freebsd-questions to solve any nagging mysteries that remain. If you're totally new at everything, remember that you'll be learning about several distinct subjects at once: UNIX commands; X; how to use particular applications; running FreeBSD. Try to distinguish between these areas of knowledge from the start. Most of the help you'll get from FreeBSD people (e.g. in freebsd-questions) is on FreeBSD itself, though they'll stray to other areas a little bit to help out. On the other hand, here as newbies we can discuss the process we've been through to learn FreeBSD and all of the other things we've needed to know about. We all have different backgrounds and different learning styles. Sharing our experiences is valuable, even when our experiences are very different. Please let us know what helps you most, in case it helps us too. -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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