Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2016 23:43:47 +0530 From: Manish Jain <bourne.identity@hotmail.com> To: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Is 10.3 i386 jinxed ? Message-ID: <BLU436-SMTP10004EAA9AA9F6D830DF24CF6670@phx.gbl> In-Reply-To: <5724604D.3020804@hotmail.com> References: <BLU436-SMTP151A41CC0BE118F82C0C189F6660@phx.gbl> <20160430084415.03be443d.freebsd@edvax.de> <5724604D.3020804@hotmail.com>
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On 04/30/16 13:05, Manish Jain wrote:
> On 04/30/16 12:14, Polytropon wrote:
>> On Sat, 30 Apr 2016 04:26:47 +0530, Manish Jain wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have a 5 year old Intel x86 Pentium-based laptop (Gateway NE56R). I
>>> just finished installing FreeBSD 10.3 (i386) with Gnome on it. I was
>>> expecting everything to go smoothly but the Gnome desktop is proving to
>>> be a disaster.
>> This also was my first impression when installing Gnome 2 ("classic
>> Gnome desktop") on a Dell D630 laptop running FreeBSD i386 10.2 (started
>> with 10.0). There was some work to do, things to update and to install,
>> scripts to abuse, crazy things to do... but after that, everything
>> worked as intended. Sadly I didn't take notes on what I did, but I can
>> assure you that most of it was not obvious, logical, or acceptable. :-/
>>
>> How did you install Gnome? Ports or packages? Which version?
>>
>>
>>
>>> Most of the desktop is trash, half the application icons
>>> are missing and there are no panels.
>> You probably are missing some important dependency packages.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Even keyboard input typed into
>>> gnome-terminal is not displayed correctly (some of the characters in
>>> the
>>> echo go missing).
>> That _really_ sounds strange.
>>
>>
>>
>>> All necessary entries (hald_enable, polkitd_enable,
>>> dbus_enable, gnome_enable) are set to YES in rc.conf. I wonder what is
>>> wrong ?
>> Using Gnome is wrong. ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>>> Is there any way I can get FreeBSD and Gnome working on the laptop ?
>> Reconsider using Gnome. Check if Lxde or Xfce will work better for you.
>>
I reinstalled the whole system using xfce as the desktop. While things
have improved, the system is still not workable.
1) The installer 'forgot' to place the boot code on the MBR. I had to
use live CD + boot0cfg to fix that.
2) The first time X started, xfce4-panel crashed
3) The second time, xfce-terminal crashed
4) The third time, trying to launch firefox rebooted the system.
Overall, 10.3 i386 seems to have gremlins in the belly. What do I do ?
Try some linux distro ? This is exactly what I have been trying to avoid.
BTW, does anyone have any idea where can I get Windows XP drivers for
the NE56R laptop ? If nothing else works, XP remains my fall-back option.
Regards,
Manish Jain
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