Aug 10 2006
BSD on the Desktop, Part 3
Published by Ivan Groznii at 10:48 pm under PC BSD How-To, Reviews |
One of my favourite sayings is from President Calvin Coolidge. It goes as follows:
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
With PC BSD, this proved to be the case; I am writing this post using Opera 9 on PC BSD. It’s got some rough edges, but once installed, I’ve found using this OS to be an enjoyable experience.
So what happened? I finally figured out one of PC BSD’s flaws - it doesn’t play very nicely with my KVM switch. My USB hub is plugged into it; and the keyboard is plugged into the hub. I had to move the keyboard to being plugged into the KVM switch, and voila, the keyboard functionality suddenly worked. A similar “distance” created problems using a USB key as well.
Installation of PC BSD, once you have the keyboard, is relatively painless. The graphical installer works well. Once in PC BSD, there’s not much configuration required; it worked with all of my hardware, with the exception that I had to download the latest Nvidia driver. With it, it’s beautiful.
PC BSD has made ease of installation a hallmark; one can find an extensive list of packages at www.pbdir.org. Downloading a PBDIR file, double clicking and installing a package is no more troublesome than using Windows or Mac OS X. In fact, once the rough edges are sorted out in so far as items like my KVM switch, this is an ideal OS for beginners.
It’s not entirely trouble free; perhaps its the lack of a progress bar, but the computer seems to boot very slowly. Strangely, the variant of the GIMP for PC BSD doesn’t support JPG files. Configuring this machine to use wireless was also no treat. However, the instructions, using an Atheros chipset card are fairly straightforward though definitely not fun:
1. Go to the “PC BSD” icon in the bottom left hand corner; this engages the windows-esque menu that KDE has.
2. Go to System > Konsole
3. Type “su” then your password. A new prompt, reading PCBSD will appear.
4. Type “kldload if_ath”. Hit enter. The system will process for a few seconds; the prompt will return.
5. To ensure that the system loads the wireless card driver every time, type “kedit /boot/defaults/loader.conf” and hit enter. Scroll to a line that reads ” if_awi_load=”NO” #AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 wireless NICs” After this, type in: “if_ath_load=”YES”" If you so wish, add the following note: “# Atheros wireless device”. Save and exit the editing programme.
6. On the bottom right hand side of the screen there will be an icon of a globe with a pipe coming out of it. This is for the network settings. Right click on this and select “Configure”.
7. You’ll see a screen with 3 tabs. Click on the Networks tab first. Click “Add” and then enter in the name of your wireless network and click OK.
8. You’ll get another window for Configuration. My wireless router acts as a DHCP server, so I selected that option. I clicked OK.
9. Click the Wireless tab and press Refresh. Your wireless network should be listed; it may take three to four clicks before it is detected. Once done, click the network name once and choose connect. Click OK when it asks you to accept the settings.
10. Once it’s done processing, you should be connected and remain so.
The good news is that browsing with PC BSD appears to be marginally faster than with Ubuntu. Opera 9 and Firefox are both outstanding; Opera has a slight, but detectable edge, however, which it did not with Linux.
There are still challenges in configuration; the PBI directory allows one to install Flash for Konqueror, but not Opera and Firefox. The printer, a Canon ip4000R, needs to be set up. The appearance needs to be tuned. I am concerned by gFTP crashing relatively easily.
For the moment, however, PC BSD land, while requiring persistence, and enduring some pain to arrive here, is a good place to be.
2 Responses to “BSD on the Desktop, Part 3”
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Thank you very much for your instructions, yet the problem is that when I do the “kedit ….config” I don’t get into any files or folders. An editor pops up
instead. My toshiba has a ” no carrier” bubble all the time.
It does not communicate wirelessly well or at all with my linksys B-Router at times. I’m usually not obtaining an ip or after dectection or it refuses to connect, My lan line works fine so I don’t know what the problem might be..
An editor is supposed to pop up when you type in Kedit - that’s the file in which you type in the lines which I describe.
Otherwise, I’m not following your problem. Please tell me what model Toshiba you’re using.