New user - small file server questions and quick GUI question

[Kurt Buff]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 15:29, Kaya Saman <SamanKaya at netscape.net> wrote:
>
>> I can't speak to the rest, but WRT the GUI, I suspect you'll find it a
>> lot easier if you install a Window Manager to handle a lot of this. I
>> have found xfce4 to be a good one for me - gnome and kde were a bit
>> much. Once I installed /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce4 with a 'make
>> config-recursive' then chose my options, then 'make install', the GUI
>> fired up just fine, and all of the hal/dbus stuff was handled for me.
>>
>> Kurt
>>
>
> I thought Gnome already came with Nautilus as Window manager??? Or in
> FreeBSD is it extra?

I see I didn't completely read your original message. Indulge me a
moment while I ramble here, and probably expose my ignorance...

 Xorg/X11 <> Gnome

Nautilis is a file manager, unless I misremember. The native file
manager for xfce4 is Thunar.

Gnome, like xfce4 (and ratpoison, kde, etc.) is a Window Manager,
which depends on Xorg/X11 to function. WMs are usually installed
installed after Xorg.

Did you install gnome from source, or did you use 'pkg_add -r'? I
don't know why, but I seem to have better luck, though it takes much
longer, if I use 'make install' from the ports tree.

> Sorry am not used to doing things from scratch but soon I will get the hang
> of it - just give me a couple of days to get the file server I am on about
> up and running then will transfer the stuff clogging my notebooks HD over
> there and install a VM through Vbox and really have a go at understanding
> the GUI.

I'm not far along that learning curve myself. Heh.

I started on an old Toshiba laptop with 256mbytes RAM, and Freesbie
worked well on that. I then learned how to install from scratch. That
was, um, interesting. I hated Linux, as it seems so arcane. Well,
perhaps 'hate' is too strong a word, but it left a bad taste in my
mouth. Once I worked with FreeBSD, it became much more clear. Things
seem to be done more sanely in FreeBSD. Now I have a nice 4gbyte
Lenovo T61, and I still like xfce4 - it does what I want, and I didn't
want to expend the effort to learn anything new.

> I did play around with FreeBSIE which is FreeBSD with the GUI installed as a
> live CD which was really cool and light and worked especially well on my
> 512MB RAM laptop. Now I don't have a memory issue as I have 6GB on a newer
> machine running 64bit OS's all the way but still need to get to grips with
> this :-)

If you're very familiar with gnome, you might wish to stay with it. If
you're just learning, for both gnome and xfce4, my preference would be
for xfce4. But that's just me, and you'll get at least 10 different
answers from the first 8 people you meet.

> Thanks for the tip Kurt!
>
> Regards,
>
> --Kaya
>
>