Solved Why FreeBSD secret tricks?

[Alain De Vos]

To compile a kernel without modules:
In make.conf
NO_MODULES =yes
----------------------------------------------------------
To know the options of all ports
pkg roptions
----------------------------------------------------------
To find the port which installed /usr/local/bin/cal
pkg which /usr/local/bin/cal
-----------------------------------------------------------
To find installable ports which provide "cal"
find /usr/ports -name pkg-plist | xargs grep bin/cal$

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… nobody cares enough to set up some useful "signage" …

It's not obvious from <https://wiki.freebsd.org/DocIdeaList>, but people do care.

There's work to significantly improve the FreeBSD web site, wiki pages and so on.

In the most recent quarterly status report: Discord Server & Community Growth – in Discord, you'll find some of the people who are spearheading improvements.

… /usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/en_US.ISO8859-1 …

Hint: en_US.ISO8859-1 content may be outdated.

… Read the excellent Handbook, … If that is too much to ask of a new user, perhaps that new user would be happier with a video game …

Perhaps, although in my experience RTFM attitudes are far more likely to alienate and anger newcomers, especially when the ***ing manual is an entire ***ing book.

"happier with a video game" is just rude. We're unlikely to find anything like this in an ITIL context.

Somebody already did: sysutils/desktop-installer

HAL is retired · Issue #9 · outpaddling/desktop-installer

Hi Background: https://old.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/ljjq4u/-/ https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/desktop-installer/#description mentions HAL; https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/tree/sysutils/desk...

github.com

To compile a kernel without modules:

I'm curious. What are the benefits?

I imagine faster startup times … what else (is there a simple answer)?

To find installable ports which provide "cal"

Also, for example:

% pkg provides bin/cal$
Name    : plan9port-20200816
Desc    : Plan 9 from User Space
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: usr/local/plan9/bin/cal

Name    : linux_base-c7-7.9.2009
Desc    : Base set of packages needed in Linux mode (Linux CentOS 7.9.2009)
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: compat/linux/usr/bin/cal

Name    : heirloom-070715_4
Desc    : Collection of standard Unix utilities
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: usr/local/heirloom/usr/5bin/cal

Name    : cal-4.1
Desc    : Enhanced color version of standard calendar utility
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: usr/local/bin/cal

Name    : 9base-20170701
Desc    : Port of various original plan9 tools
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: usr/local/9/bin/cal
% pkg provides pkg-provides
Name    : pkg-provides-0.7.1
Desc    : Pkg plugin for querying which package provides a particular file
Repo    : FreeBSD
Filename: usr/local/man/man8/pkg-provides.8.gz
%

… bits and pieces from things like GhostBSD, old PC-BSD/TrueOS/Trident …

?

This deserves a separate post.

There is a quality model called FURPS which reduces a hundred or more factors to the 5 most important.

Thanks, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FURPS>

… I tinkered with Xorg a few times … not interested graphic widgets. …

So, what's below is not for you, but here goes …

… become more Proficient through experience …

?, however …

… the premise since the start of the forums here. … give a man a fish…

… better give a person a working desktop environment, if that person is accustomed to GUIs …

We generally don't like to spoonfeed people because you don't learn anything from that. We will try and point you in the right direction, but you have to do the legwork yourself. The journey matters more than the destination itself.

… days, months or years on voyages of discovery can be unnecessarily painful. Too often a waste of time.

I liked learning about all the obscure locations where information was located or what magic words I had to put into the manpage search to get what I wanted.

I enjoy learning, but obscurity can be very frustrating.

They aren't even sufficient at times and I have to dig through commit comments.

Yeah. That, and more.

With added emphasis:

I don't view these as useful, transferrable skills for end users and somebody who isn't a professional setting up FreeBSD multiple times shouldn't have to learn them.

?

 

[drhowarddrfine]

… better give a person a working desktop environment, if that person is accustomed to GUIs …

I've been seeing comments around the 'net similar to this lately and I don't understand how pkg install <desktop> is so difficult or complicated.

 

[ralphbsz]

Perhaps, although in my experience RTFM attitudes are far more likely to alienate and anger newcomers, especially when the ***ing manual is an entire ***ing book.

One of the things that distinguishes FreeBSD from other free OSes is good documentation. Documentation is there to be used, and forms part of the workflow expected of users. I answer many questions with "read the handbook", and for beginners, the best advice is "read the handbook cover to cover before beginning to use FreeBSD". People who don't want to read a ***ing book are probably not well suited to be FreeBSD users.

 

[Alain De Vos]

For beginner it can be abstract is my feeling.

 

[Deleted member 30996]

There's work to significantly improve the FreeBSD web site, wiki pages and so on.

So, what's below is not for you, but here goes …

Perhaps, although in my experience RTFM attitudes are far more likely to alienate and anger newcomers, especially when the ***ing manual is an entire ***ing book.

I did in one page what it took Sam a whole book to get done:

Sams Teach Yourself Linux in 24 Hours is a tutorial aimed at making the Linux beginner more effective and productive users of the operating system. Most books in this category are more of a general reference in nature and are designed to cover Linux in general. Well, every Linux distribution is different - file locations can change, commands can be a little different, etc. This means the readers of those books may not find answers specific to their installation. This book will use the effective Sams Teach Yourself format to instruct the reader how to: install the operating system, configure their hardware, and effectively use the tools that come with the Red Hat distribution included on the CD-ROM.

Learn how to install Red Hat Linux by walking through an easy to follow hardware configuration
Understand how to use Linux commands, configure your network and servers and manage users of your system
Discover the power of X(TM) Windows
The CD-ROM delivers Red Hat Linux V5.0--a $49.95 value-- complete with source code

Buy the book for $22.48

I have a one page Beginners Tutorial with a target audience of someone who has never used the commandline that takes you from installation of the FreeBSD Base System to a fully functional Fluxbox Window Manager FreeBSD desktop using ports to compile third party programs posted here:

Beginners Guide - How To Set Up A FreeBSD Desktop From Scratch

I'm going to guide you though the process of getting a fully functional FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE desktop up and running, complete with system files and security settings, step-by-step as if you've never used UNIX or the command line. Now let's get started: Insert your boot media and at the Welcome...

forums.freebsd.org

So, what's below is not for you, but here goes …

I enjoy learning, but obscurity can be very frustrating.

Yeah. That, and more.

With added emphasis:

I don't view these as useful, transferrable skills for end users and somebody who isn't a professional setting up FreeBSD multiple times shouldn't have to learn them.

Guess it just depends on how smart you want to be.

I taught myself to use FreeBSD and ports without looking at the Handbook because I didn't think it applied to PC-BSD. I had a hard time of it and nobody would answer questions there, if they even knew, lest there be lamb chops on the menu.

I wrote that tutorial with skills learned to transfer them to people with the same amount of knowledge I had at that time so they would not have such a hard time.

And it's free! For them. Because I love them so...

I'm in the hole on hosting alone and just renewed the hosting package for my site which hosts the tutorial (for double Google ranking), the one I wrote about spoofing your MAC and more original content coming, wallpapers for something shiny as a reward with a whole new graphic design and layout all handwritten in valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and Level 3 CSS with no scripting or ads:

Building A FreeBSD Desktop From Scratch

All Your Words Are Belong To Us

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… for beginners, the best advice is "read the handbook cover to cover before beginning to use FreeBSD" …

Swathes of the FreeBSD Handbook are not suitable for beginners.

 

[kpedersen]

In many ways, Linux is good enough that people should be able to take their time to learn FreeBSD properly. For example, it is very rare that someone would be chucked in at the deep end to maintain a FreeBSD system with a tight deadline to fix everything. So there is really no excuse to take shortcuts. They should take their time and enjoy the process and learn it properly.

It's not like systemd or Docker(R) where you have to learn it quick or it will be replaced before you can try anything out

 

[msplsh]

I've been seeing comments around the 'net similar to this lately and I don't understand how pkg install <desktop> is so difficult or complicated.

You may be able to understand it if you check in on the first post of the thread where it was talking about the difficulties in figuring out how to get the video driver working in order for that command to produce a working desktop environment.

 

[astyle]

Swathes of the FreeBSD Handbook are not suitable for beginners.

That's OK, it's well organized. If you're willing to put in the effort to figure things out, it will be time well spent.

 

[Alain De Vos]

You must acknowledge ubuntu-linux , mint-linux has a lower entry level. Meaning you click with your mouse choose kde or gnome and you are going .

 

[kpedersen]

You must acknowledge ubuntu-linux , mint-linux has a lower entry level. Meaning you click with your mouse choose kde or gnome and you are going .

And Windows has a lower entry still. However FreeBSD is more like Arch, Alpine and Gentoo. These Linux distros are very popular and arguably more difficult than FreeBSD to set up a desktop.

Perhaps that freebsd-desktop port could be expanded upon to tweak / install the drm related drivers.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

msplsh I was the fifth responder in this thread but the response you quoted me about was about graham's post reminded about.

 

[tankist02]

After thinking for a few days, I believe the issue is the need for another computer beside the FreeBSD one being setup. That is, I am typing on the BSD console while reading freebsd.org on the screen of another computer. This is a frustrating way to work for me.

The first thing I do when installing FreeBSD is to enable ssh login. Then I use another computer to read about installation and copy/paste relevant commands into ssh console of the computer being installed.

 

[aragats]

msplsh I was the fifth responder in this thread but the response you quoted me about was about graham's post reminded about.

OFF-TOPIC: Alas, red*-shift is detected in most threads recently...

 

[msplsh]

I was the fifth responder in this thread but the response you quoted me about was about graham's post reminded about.

It's the same thing. Getting the desktop (gui) working. What you posted is but a fraction of what's necessary to get it to "work" in cases.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

msplsh It's not. I don't do this every day, like it seems some people do, but, when I do install FreeBSD on something as I did on my workstation recently, it goes smoothly and effortlessly in a matter of minutes using only the Handbook to remind me of the steps when necessary. There aren't very many steps.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

OFF-TOPIC: Alas, red*-shift is detected in most threads recently...

I don't know what that means.

 

[msplsh]

It's not

Again, this thread is about how it literally IS.

 

[drhowarddrfine]

msplsh Again. It's not.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

If you're willing to put in the effort to figure things out,

I am,

it will be time well spent.

Not as originally suggested. Recall:

for beginners, the best advice is "read the handbook cover to cover before beginning to use FreeBSD"

I began using FreeBSD years ago. There willl never be a need for me to read the entire book.

I don't foresee my notebook providing a dial-in service, and so on.

 

[ralphbsz]

... and for beginners, the best advice is "read the handbook cover to cover before beginning to use FreeBSD".

OK, let me correct that: I think a beginner should read a certain fraction of the handbook carefully (concepts, UFS versus ZFS, installation, partitions, ...), and then scan the rest of the handbook quickly, to know what is there. Dial-in service? Skip. Poudriere? Fascinating, but irrelevant if you decide early on to just install packages. X Window, browsers, and TV cards? I run FreeBSD as a server. And so on. Like that, the beginner at least knows where they can start to get help.

One of the things that really annoys me is the posts here that can be answered by "use man on that command" or "read the handbook section for this topic". Admittedly, it rarely occurs in this pure form (example: I want ls output sorted by modification time, not by file name), it more often occurs as an XY problem: I have this detailed question about how something works, or I want some detail to work this way, or this detail isn't working for me. After some probing, we then discover that the person asking actually wants to solve a much simpler task, and common ways to solve the simpler problem are well documented.

 

[scottro]

I see this kind of thread frequently. Someone inexperienced says this shouldn't be this hard, and someone experienced says it's not hard. While this statement is too general to be completely true, everything is easy if you know how to do it.

I remember at work, there was something that I didn't find difficult that someone did. I walked them through it and they said, Wow, that 5 minute tutorial made all the difference. Some folks learn best from reading, others from video, others need a person there to walk them through it.


People get frustrated. I'm sure that lots of us have written to friends, or read emails from friends saying, I HATE computers. How we respond to such frustration might bring in a convert who will later become a developer who finally gets wireless working at Linux's level in FreeBSD.

Or it may bring in a troublesome person who will continue to just complain and aggravate the forum. But for someone new to it, it can be frustrating.

 

[Alain De Vos]

An nice example is the following.
To compile falkon browser with flavor qtonly you need to add the line to make.conf:
FLAVOR=qtonly
I looked in the handbook and used "FLAVORS" instead of "FLAVOR".
Have a look at the handbook,

Chapter 7. Flavors

Flavors are a way to have multiple variations of a port

docs.freebsd.org

Or the port,

FreshPorts -- www/falkon: Web browser based on Webengine and Qt Framework

Falkon is a very fast web browser that uses QtWebEngine, and aims to be lightweight on all major platforms. It has all the standard functions that are expected from a web browser, including bookmarks, history, sidebar, and tabs. Plus: integral AdBlock, and editing of the local CA certificate...

www.freshports.org

You can not say it was complicated but I was unable to do it.

With the line FLAVOR=qtonly other ports would not compile , so I had to use,

.if ${.CURDIR:M*/www/falkon}
  FLAVOR=qtonly
.endif

 

[msplsh]

Again. It's not.

Well I suppose you'll be stuck in the land of not understanding forever. Maybe when you get out you could be of help.