The Linux Extremist

I’ve used many distros, but up until now, it’s never been the case that I’ve been unable to install one.

I spent 3 maddening hours trying to get PC BSD to install on the machine which I listed in my previous article. In every case, the CD ROM would boot up and then freeze at the screen where one can select the graphical installation wizard; the mouse would still function, but the keyboard would not. I found myself banging on “Enter” just trying to get the graphical installation wizard to engage. To remedy this, I went through the following steps:

1. I first thought the CD ROM might have been scratched or faulty - I re-downloaded PC BSD and re-burned it. No change.

2. I then thought that it might be the Microsoft Digital USB keyboard I’m using. I swapped it for a standard PS/2 one. No change.

3. I unplugged USB entirely and just used the PS/2 keyboard. No change.

4. I thought it might have something to do with the Belkin USB 2 card that the USB was running off of. I used the standard USB 1.1 connection provided by my motherboard. No change.

5. I tested the CD ROM on my Beige Lightning PC, the specification of this is as follows:

120 GB Seagate Barracuda

GA - K8NE Motherboard

AMD Sempron 3100+ processor

Nvidia GeForce 6600 256 MB PCI Express Video Card

Creative Audigy Sound Card

Initially, this worked. However, in order to install PC BSD on that machine, I was going to have to either install an additional IDE hard drive or wipe the entire machine. As this is my main machine, I opted to install the additional hard drive. After doing that, the install again did not work, exhibiting the same behaviour.

The machine I was originally going to put PC BSD on had two IDE hard drives, so I wondered if by removing one, that would solve the problem. It didn’t.

As it was finally 1 AM, I gave up. I am reporting this as a bug to the PC BSD people. Needless to say, it’s extremely disappointing.

There are two rivals to PC BSD; DesktopBSD and FreeBSD itself. DesktopBSD will be the next port of call, and I’ll see if there is more luck to be had there.

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