Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 10:40:58 -0500 From: "C. Ulrich" <dincht@securenym.net> To: "Dr. Clark Mankin" <cmankin@qwest.net> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bsd 5.1 video install Message-ID: <200312011448.hB1Em5L12446@anon.securenym.net> In-Reply-To: <001f01c3b640$df8f0480$0201a8c0@upyours> References: <001f01c3b640$df8f0480$0201a8c0@upyours>
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------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Sat, 2003-11-29 at 01:20, Dr. Clark Mankin wrote: > I'm very happy to have moved my entire network to BSD 5.1. The > installation was a breeze. > > I have only one comment and that is this: > > in 1999 when I installed first Red Hat 5.0 and then 5.2, I was > required to select my video card from a list and to find a set of > specifications that matched my monitor unless its name was on the list. > > By the time I changed to Mandrake 6.5 a short while later, that issue > had been resolved and until this installation I had never again been > asked any questions of any kind about hardware devices. > > It seems to me that this is your weakest point. I have almost zero use > for KDE. I wanted it mainly to burn CDs using their tools. I'm a > command line person, so it's not any inconvenience on a day to day > basis, but until I can either buy a new monitor so I have the necessary > data to answer your inquiries, or until I make a lucky guess, I will not > be able to configure an X server and that is truly unfortunate in the > year 2003. > > Happy Thanksgiving one and all and a Merry Christmas is just around the corner. Please wrap your messages at 72 chars. Well, it's important to realize that currently, FreeBSD is designed to be mostly a server operating system. Although there are efforts to increase its viability on the desktop, it's not going to be the next Mac OS X anytime soon. That's not to say you *can't* use it as a desktop system... I do, but I also realize that there are going to be some hurdles and limitations along the way. Thus, FreeBSD has very little in the way of automatic hardware detection. Regarding your monitor, all you really have to do is find the manual for it and tell X what the horizontal and vertical sync ranges are. You could probably even find this information on the web. (I think X now has a way to automatically query the monitor for the sync ranges, anybody want to clue me in on this?) Comparing FreeBSD to your previous Red Hat and Mandrake experiences is a whole apples and oranges issue unto itself. The Red Hat and Mandrake Linux distributions are great for some things, FreeBSD is great for others. Your job is to figure out what you want your operating system to do and then pick whichever one does it the best. Charles Ulrich -- http://bityard.net
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