A strategic question (continued)

[Jozef Baum]

Many thanks to everyone who answered my previous e-mail about this subject
on this list or by private e-mail.

As some of you suggested, I have installed PC-BSD (http://www.pcbsd.com/). I
am sure a Unix guru would not like to install FreeBSD in this way, as it
doesn't offer many choices. But it is just wonderful for a Unix newbie like
me. At the end of the installation, the GUI, the cable Internet connection,
and even the sound system worked fine. Some configuration still needs to be
done (printing and German keyboard). But now at least I have a system I can
use right away to do some usefull work with, and to further explore.

I will try to configure the printing myself before perhaps eventually asking
some specific questions about it here.

I found an interesting explanation about the configuration of the German
keyboard, so if some other German speaking newbie asks about it:

http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~eserte/FreeBSD/doc/umlaute/umlaute.html

Giorgos Keramidas asked me:

> Can you explain *how* you configured your X11 desktop?

Like explained in the handbook. First I created an xorg.conf.new
configuration skeleton file with

# Xorg -configure

Then I tested this configuration with

# Xorg -config xorg.conf.new

The result was a "Mode not supported" message on the display screen until I
found out the HorizSync and VertRefresh values to write in the Section
"Monitor" which were supported, and which were much narrower than the
hardware manufacturers specifications.

The display adapter is an nVidia GeForce4 MX with integrated GPU (which uses
64 MB of the system's 512 MB physical working memory). The LCD monitor is a
Proview 780.