20050721

FreeBSD as a Desktop

Just ditched my office workstation running Ubuntu 5.04 (based off Debian) to FreeBSD 5.4. I used FreeBSD before but as a server. What am I thinking? Though GNOME (my choice of WM) is supported, it's not *fully* supported per-se. For one, whenever I access the Users & Groups in the Admin section while running as a regular user, the bloody program just waits there. For nothing. It should at least ask me for the root password but it didn't.

But I still like it, it's small and stable considering what I mentioned above. What I did:

1. Install FreeBSD minimal - at this point I have a "usable" FreeBSD machine. Then used pkg_add to install the Xorg X server. Since FireFox isn't on the CD, I used pkg_add -r firefox to do a web install. So pkg_add proceeds to download firefox *and* it's dependencies... including perl. WTF? Why?

2. OK, I need to install GNOME. A lot of people are whining about some WMs are too bloated. Luckily, FreeBSD's ports include gnome2-lite which is a minimal install of GNOME. So off I go via pkg_add -r gnome2-lite.

3. Also pkg_add -r gdm for good measure.

4. Edited /etc/ttys and enabled GDM.

5. I'm still sexy.

I also tried adding the flash plugin for FireFox. Interestingly, firefox crashes from time to time so I removed it via pkg_delete. Good ridence I say. No flash? It's all good. I don't need it anyway since I'm at work. :D

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