Couple quick questions about installing FreeBSD

[tarballed]

I'm back, posting in the FreeBSD category now! :lol:

Just a couple quick questions. I have CD's for both 4.5 and 4.6 versions of FreeBSD.

Here is the system that I will be installing it on:

Asus CUSL-2 motherboard
P3 1gig CPU
256mb RAM
1 26 gig IBM drive
1 20 gig WD drive
Matrox Millenium G450 16mb Card
Linksys Nic

Nothing fancy. Also will be sharing a keyboard and mouse through a Belkin KVM switch.

Basically, i'm planning on double, possibly triple booting this box. FreeBSD will be on there, and i'm also looking at installing Slackware and Gentoo. (I'm still trying to decide if I want to hurry up and build a quick computer that will run a *BSD distro entirely, with no multi booting...)

I figure that I have some extra drives so i'll give it a shot.

In regards to the FreeBSD installation, it's pretty straight forward. Only question I have is regarding X-windows. I'd like to install it on FreeBSD just to play around with. So far, i've failed at two attempts during installation to successfully install X-Windows and get it running.

I'm wondering if I am missing something during the installation? I pretty much just configured the XDesktop for Gnome, but what im thinking is that I did not go through the XWindows server config tool. The one where you can configure you keyboard, monitor, card, monitor settings etc. I think that may be where my mistake lies.

Does anyone have some tips or suggestions as far as installing FreeBSD and getting X-Windows up and running?

Thanks everyone.

I'm back. :)

Tarballed

[bsdjunkie]

Running /stand/sysinstall will bring you back to the install menu where under options i think you can redo X settings. There are 3-4 diff ways to setup X under there. The fully graphical one never worked for me, so i think i used the ncurses version. Else you can always do it from cmd line as well.

[tarballed]

Would you recommend just going through the default install, booting to the cmd line and running /stand/sysinstall ?

More or less just wanted to play with Gnome on FreeBSD.

Tarballed

[tarballed]

One more quick question. Boot loader. Anyone have a particular one they like? I was thinking of trying GRUB.

Any suggestions?

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[bsdjunkie]

freebsd's boot loader plays well with others, but if u install linux after bsd, then you need lilo or grub. I prefer lilo myself, but ive been using it for yrs and dont know much about grub =P

[Pete]

Just a quick note. FreeBSD gets picky when your trying to do Xwindows set up when you first install it. The system will just hang and your wont be able to do anything.

Install BSD but dont do the graphic set up. Reboot. Then go back in and do a post configuration installl.

FYI: not all monitor types and graphics cards are listed if you choose a GUI install method. Take the necrus (I think necrus is spelled right) method of config or any other text based, pick the GUI last (just from personal experience).

Hope that helps.

[soup4you2]

i never really cared for the /stand/sysinstall always tend to do things by hand.. X you just pretty much need your .xinitrc in your home dir and do the Xf86config in your /etc/X11 dir