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IT Consulting, Software Development
Small Business, Schools, Residential

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Software Auto-admin Desktop-installer Cluster-admin Roboctl OpenVex APP - Assembly Pre-Processor

Overview FreeBSD has all the features necessary to make a solid desktop system for WEB browsing, editing documents, playing music and videos, developing software, and much more. However, configuring a basic FreeBSD installation from scratch requires a great deal of knowledge that would take a long time for a novice to gather. Desktop-installer is a post-install script that contains all the necessary knowledge to build a typical desktop system. It automates the process of configuring FreeBSD as a desktop or laptop computer. The desktop-installer script installs necessary ports/packages, configures the graphical desktop of your choice (e.g. Gnome, KDE, XFCE, ...), and configures services such as printing, SSH, and auto-mounting of discs and USB storage devices. Using desktop-installer, a typical desktop system on modern hardware can be fully configured and ready to use in an hour or two. Without desktop-installer, this process could take days or weeks of searching the WEB for information on what software to install and how to edit the system files required to make it all work together. The design philosophy behind desktop-installer is that everything should work out of the box. That is, after running desktop-installer, all installed applications should work without further user intervention, printing should work from all applications, all web pages should display properly (assuming it's possible using available open source software), and external devices such as USB/FireWire disks, cameras, etc. should all work without further configuration. Anything that does not work out of the box is considered a bug and should be reported. The end-user is only expected to run desktop-installer and answer the questions. Since man-hours are costly and in limited, we have no intention of creating a GUI interface for desktop-installer. All efforts will be focused on improving functionality, not appearance (unless we run out of features to add and bugs to fix). If you want a GUI installer, check out PC-BSD, GhostBSD, DesktopBSD, or one of the Ubuntu Linux distributions. Using Desktop Installer The script begins with some basic questions about how you want your system configured, and then runs unattended while installing the desktop system and other common software. Selecting a desktop during setup... An hour or two later... After the base installation is completed, desktop-installer asks you a few more configuration questions, and offers the option of installing additional applications such as email, office, and graphics software. Unlike "distributions" such as PC-BSD and Ubuntu, desktop-installer is designed only to configure, not to alter, the base operating system installation. Modifications to system files are tagged with comments, so you can see exactly what the script has done. After setting up a system with desktop-installer, you can continue to use stock configuration tools such as adduser, pw, pkg_add, etc. without worrying about breaking anything. To set up your system with desktop-installer, follow these simple steps: Install a basic FreeBSD system. The recommended installation profile includes the ports tree and system source code. Install the desktop-installer port or package. pkg_add -r desktop-installer Run desktop-installer as root, and follow the instructions on the screen. Note that desktop-installer will halt if it encounters any errors. Broken ports/packages are the most common cause of this. If you run into any problems while running desktop-installer, simply resolve the problem manually, and run desktop-installer again. Multiple Desktops It is possible to run Gnome and XFCE on the same system. Other combinations may also be possible, but have not been tested. The suggested procedure is to first run desktop installer, doing a complete installation with Gnome. Then re-run desktop-installer and select XFCE, but answer NO to enabling XDM when prompted. GDM should automatically detect XFCE as a possible session selection when you log in. Hardware Compatibility If you have used Desktop Installer and would like to contribute to this compatibility list, please send an email containing the make and model of your computer (or motherboard and video chip set if it's custom built), version of FreeBSD, and a BRIEF description of what's working and what isn't. Make/Model FreeBSD Version[s] Working / Not Working / Not Tested Various Desktop Systems 8.2-RELEASE, 9.0-RELEASE Testing has been performed on a wide variety of desktop computers, with very few problems encountered. IBM ThinkPad T41/T42 8.0-RELEASE and up All features work. If lid switch is set to put computer to sleep, it will go to sleep when the power source is unplugged. Can be awakened by pressing the function key. ASUS Eee PC 1015PE 8.2-RELEASE All features work, but WIFI reception is very weak. Must use alpha Intel graphics driver, which is unfinished, and causes screen corruption after suspend/resume. ASUS Eee PC 1015PE 9.0-RELEASE All features work except ACPI functions. Does not resume after suspend, function keys don't work. Must use alpha Intel graphics driver. WIFI reception is solid. VirtualBox 4.x 8.2-RELEASE, 9.0-RELEASE, 8.3-BETA1 All features work. With guest additions enabled, the first three mouse clicks after starting a session are swallowed, but everything works fine afterward. Desktop-installer automatically detects the VirtualBox and performs appropriate software installation and configuration. Workarounds On some systems, wifimgr and ifconfig list scan may not initially show any networks. Adding a known network using the "Add Cloaked Network" option in wifimgr may correct this issue.