From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 13 15:05:22 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 22FF916A4CE for ; Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:05:22 +0000 (GMT) Received: from idesigns.net (idesigns.net [209.239.38.159]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BDAB843D4C for ; Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:05:21 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from bilsch@schmittnet.com) Received: from [192.168.0.2] (ct-seymour2b-104.wtrbct.adelphia.net [68.68.133.104]) by idesigns.net (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i8DF5K5G024974; Mon, 13 Sep 2004 11:05:21 -0400 Message-ID: <4145B73D.4010902@schmittnet.com> Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 11:05:33 -0400 From: Bill Schmitt User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7.3 (Windows/20040803) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en To: pryan@singnet.com.sg References: <200409111128.i8BBSYR7025569@eastgate.starhub.net.sg> In-Reply-To: <200409111128.i8BBSYR7025569@eastgate.starhub.net.sg> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.1 cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Need advice X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:05:22 -0000 I appreciate the suggestions, Peter. I picked up a new card over the weekend, and have been working through getting that installed. You'll probably see a new note to the list later today on that, since my impressions of the installation processes are dropping by the minute. Bill Peter Ryan wrote: -----Original Message----- Bill Schmitt (SW) Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 17:37 To: [1]freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Need advice Considering all of that, my questions are: - Am I being unrealistic in choosing a machine with a 300MHz processor? - If I add another 128MB of memory, should I expect to see a dramatic improvement? - Could the graphics adapter itself be the bottleneck? - If I picked up a newer graphics adapter that was supported by xorg, would a switch to 5.x and/or xorg be expected to pick up the speed a bit? Thanks to anyone who might help fill in the blanks. Bill I am an ultra newbie to everything *nix, so bear that in mind when considering what I write. I would watch out for your swap space setting. One of my 'play' machines has only 64MB memory. When i set swap too big (512MB on one occasion), the KDE desktop ran like a dead dog. Switching back to a more reasonable swap fixed that problem. I had been installing from the 4.10R CD, included KDE selected as a desktop. This installed a KDE package from the CD. This caused me no end of problems when I tried to install some other packages wanting more recent versions of things KDE used. I may have chosen poorly when selecting what to do about that, but I have now settled on an install procedure which seems to avoid most of the problems I have encountered - so far :) I install from the 4.10CD, and only select cvsup from the package collection. I dont install a desktop from the list offered during the sysinstall. I then rebuild the ports completely using cvsup. I then install /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade. I then run portsdb -Uu Then I upgrade the few packages that are already there (primarily XFree86) with portupgrade -a. This procedure has served me well so far. It is based on the OnLamp article and much assistance from Matthew Seaman and others on this list. [2]http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/07/FreeBSD_Basics.html [3]http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/4111 and the patch suggested by Matthew for a portsdb problem,which worked. [4]http://archive.pilgerer.org/mharc/html/freebsd-questions/2004-09/msg00563.ht ml Once that is done i go on with whatever packages I want to try, including the desktop. I found the best place to look through the questions mailing list is [5]http://archive.pilgerer.org/mharc/html/freebsd-questions/ The layout of threads is excellent Hope something here helps Peter References 1. mailto:freebsd-questions@freebsd.org 2. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/07/FreeBSD_Basics.html 3. http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/4111 4. http://archive.pilgerer.org/mharc/html/freebsd-questions/2004-09/msg00563.ht 5. http://archive.pilgerer.org/mharc/html/freebsd-questions/