Date: Sat, 10 Jul 2004 10:12:01 +0100 From: arden <arden@nildram.co.uk> To: Kristian Holdich <kjholdich@yahoo.co.uk> Cc: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Newbieish Desktop Questions Message-ID: <1089450721.2380.1.camel@localhost> In-Reply-To: <1089450203.26300.39.camel@slide.hopto.org> References: <1089450203.26300.39.camel@slide.hopto.org>
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On Sat, 2004-07-10 at 10:03, Kristian Holdich wrote: > Hi, > > I've recently installed FreeBSD 5.2.1 onto my home pc to use as a > desktop OS and am working through getting it going just right. I have > some experience with administrating earlier versions as headless servers > with 4.x and Solaris, but very little experience with multimedia. I have > a ton of little questions, and minor niggles that i'm sure could be > solved by RTFM and a lot that will be down to personal preference ;) > > First up, the system is was an absolute minimal 5.2.1 install, no X, no > packages etc. First thing I did was build cvsup in ports, cvsup ports > and get portupgrade going. I've recompiled the kernel a few times tuning > it to my hardware, getting scsi support for my ide cdrw amongst other > things. I installed x.org from source and put gnome2 / gdm on top of it. > The NVIDIA drivers are running accelerated and my Aureal Vortex2 sound > card works. On top of that I have linux-flash running on Firebird 0.9.1, > Evolution as a mail client and OpenOffice.org running happily. > > All in all it's working pretty good, but there are some issues :) > > When i su - root, the DISPLAY doesn't seem to get set properly and root > can't open X windows, I can hack this in roots profile, but is there a > better way of doing it? > > Speaking of root, i'm so used to Bash i'd like to switch to it for the > root user - is there any gotchas with moving bash to /bin and updating > /etc/shells to allow it? > > More media orientated questions, when using Gentoo during bootup before > X started you could switch the console into VESA SVGA and have high > resolution, including having a graphical splash screen to obscure the > boot text before X came up - is there any way to do that. > > Another thing Gentoo had was a very flashy screen for GDM, and I assume > KDM too - anyone knowof resources for doing something like that, even if > it's just clip art of Beastie. > > Boot sequence, I have FreeBSD on the master drive and Win98 for gaming > on the slave drive, but the boot loader never picked up Win98 during > install what do I edit it get it to see it, or should I install an > alternative loader such as Grub? > > I have my fat32 filesystem mounted at /mnt/windows: > /dev/ad1s1 /mnt/windows msdos rw 0 0 > But it mounts 700 as root, what should I use to change it to 775 > root:wheel? > > Onto mplayer, got this installed with all the codecs, and installed the > skins and fonts to get it graphical, but it just wont seem to start up > with a gui, and yes i'm using gmplayer any suggestions? Another odd > thing is after it finishes playing it messes up the console and somehow > turns off local echo - anyone experienced this? > > DVD playback, neither mplayer nor xine seem to recognise my dvd, i did > the kernel tweaks and devfs tweaks in the handbook: > > lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5 Jul 9 20:14 /dev/cdrom -> acd0 > lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 3 Jul 9 20:14 /dev/dvd -> acd0 > lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 4 Jul 9 20:14 /dev/rdvd -> acd0 > > CDRW burning, what works well on FreeBSD? - I've been a bit spoiled by > Nero on Windows so ideally want something as hassle free as that, used > XCDRoast on Linux and it wasn't bad. http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/ports.php?c=sysutils&n=k3b try k2b work great for me in linux > > Anyway thanks in advance, no doubt more questions will come up > > With Regards > > Kristian > > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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