Trying out PC-BSD 9.2: Intro

You might read about how I tried to get some BSD running on my kinda spare Samsung Series 5 laptop. And how I was not successful. I pretty much gave up. 

Here you might read that I am thinking about getting rid of Windows on my another laptop, that I use everyday (gateway nv5214u, specs here). And I really do. In fact, I decided to use PC-BSD as testing subject. 

Why? 

New version was announced few days ago. 

Fresh blood, I mean. And the fact they they always serve live USB image. Makes things much more easier as I have pendrive to spare, but no spare partition to install and test. 

PCBSD9.2-RELEASE-x64-USB-live-latest

Getting it on pendrive was pretty much straight forward. I used following dd on my Debian machine. 

dd if=PCBSD9.2-RELEASE-x64-USB-live-latest.img of=/dev/sdb bs=64k conv=sync

(Just in case someone is wondering why, head to google ;] there's a bunch of stuff out there explaining how this works.)

And success!

93752+1 records in
93753+0 records out
6144196608 bytes (6.1 GB) copied, 1945.92 s, 3.2 MB/s

At least it seems as I booted just fine.

And when booting, I mean Multi User - the first and default selection.
During first boot, I got following:

Do you want to expand the file system for this LIVE media?
The process may take up to 15 minutes. 

 I answer yes, as I would like to use some extra space on pendrive for some installs and tests. Process takes about few seconds, as my drive is 8GB only. System reboots.

 First graphical screen I see is asking me whether I wanna keep settings for desktop it uses right now.

1366x768
driver:radeon

 Looks good, I shall keep it. Then I see animation, kinda like when you first run Windows (No sound so I guess it is now yet configured, or not working). Personally, I would rather not see it.

After that comes Setup. Every step let you choose keyboard layout, you can even use on-screen keyboard or check help page for current step. What I miss is possibility to make screenshot, in case of some problems.

First, you need to set language. I keep English, easier to get help with troubles.
Next is Time Zone and Hostname, followed by root password and user config. You have to create user password. You can also choose to encrypt $HOME directory. I go on without encryption.

Setup is now completed. I have login screen (no reboot).

I log in, wondering: How will I make the screenshot of default desktop?  

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JH

software developer - guitar player - poetry lover