PC-BSD Led To KDE Crash After Crash
I recently decided to leave Windows for good and to move onto FreeBSD. Given that I am very new to *nix based systems I decided to try out PC-BSD first. While editing KDE settings through the provided GUI utilities KDE would often crash and reboot itself (system wouldn't reboot, just KDE). The same result would happen if I tried messing around with Widgets on the desktop (only tried the Weather Widget). After having trouble getting into Root I decided to leave PC-BSD and to move onto DesktopBSD.


DesktopBSD Was Hard Lock & Reboot Hell
DesktopBSD uses KDE as well although the OS interface looked very different compared to PC-BSD. Last night I was getting my sound card setup. When I went to change "Use Custom Sampling Rate" from 44100 to 96000 the system hard locked and rebooted. When I got back in I was able to make the change without any problems. After my sound was working fine I started going through the Control Center settings in order to get KDE just how I liked it.

After I added a custom Desktop background (that is clicked Apply) the system was stable for about one minute and then hard locked and rebooted. As soon as it displayed my desktop it hard locked and rebooted again. I tried to login to Safe Mode and within a few seconds of choosing that option at the boot menu it hard locked and rebooted. I tried two more times to get into the Desktop and was finally able to get into KDE and remove the background. Note that I have reapplied the same wallpaper that caused this behavior and it hasn't given me anymore trouble.


Is KDE Or FreeBSD To Blame?
The whole point of me moving to FreeBSD was for some stability. Is KDE often unstable or are my issues with FreeBSD itself?


EDIT
I did receive a response over at the DesktopBSD forums that stated the background can only be in Jpeg format or the system will crash. They said if I was using a jpeg that several different bugs could have been the culprit but addressing everything would simply take too much time (for the user responding that is) and he recommend I just reinstall the OS and not mess with a background picture and to not edit KDE settings too much as doing so can cause KDE (I'm assuming this is unique to DesktopBSD) to crash and/or hard lock. Not the most reassuring response 8)

if you want stability install Red Hat or Debian or Ubuntu

I know nothing about Free BSD, but I do know that you received LOTS of advice that did not include that particular option.

I am running KDE 4.3.2 on Arch, and the ONLY real issue so far is an occassional lockup when switching users thru KDM. There are some minor "funnies" but I don't yet have them in focus.

How much RAM? One good way to have problems with ANY OS is inadequate RAM.

@Mulsiphix: I'd mention at the outset that DesktopBSD is being discontinued (i.e. no more releases after 1.7).

If you aren't able to get satisfactory PC-BSD help, you might want to tap their forums.

I've got 3GB of RAM. I have an Intel C2D E6300 Processor that is not overclocked. I have a Nvidia GTX 260 graphics card and a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card. That sucks about DesktopBSD but I'm happy I know about it. It would have sucked hardcore to choose that and find out much later after I had spent a lot of time customizing it to my personal needs (primarily referring to software). I have inquired at the DesktopBSD forums but so far no replies. PC-BSD is one of those distributions that make doing any form of root work very difficult which is why I won't be using that BSD long term.

Could you indicate which version of KDE you are using?

KDE version: 3.5.10
System: FreeBSD (DesktopBSD)
Release: 7.2-RELEASE-p3
Machine: i386

Why not just install FreeBSD 7.2 and make it from there?

What do you mean by "make it from there?". FreeBSD has no GUI by default and I've only been messing around with PC-BSD and DesktopBSD for two days. I want to eventually move into FreeBSD but planned on using a Window Manager over a full fledge Desktop environment like Gnome or KDE. At this point I'm just curious as to what may be causing the crashes.

Lol I tried to explain how complex this is.....

Know your going to learn what I know.. Some installation has changed since the last time I played with BSD...


Hey your reading is going to increase 3 fold good luck...

FreeBSD manual


Also your porting in Apps so this means it complies from source code..

Debain
make
make install
make clean


Slackware
Make
make install
check install

theres is a bit different BSD
make
install
clean

Keep in mind your going to have to fetch there database of programs by

# portsnap fetch

then extract the list

# portsnap extract

at a later time you can update the list of stable/unstable packages

# portsnap update


The way I got this done was to have a spare computer right next to me with the manual open and follow step by step how to install BSD or print the whole manual out and highlight important steps...

This is going to take some time....

Your system will be stable after all of this good luck read the manual...

Basically your going to have to jump in with both feet this rabbit hole is deep...

Good luck

What Fin7PL is stating is that the Release p3 includes KDE as the gui(graphical user interface)

It is a pre built installation of FreeBSD with KDE...

I won't leave your side just cause you jumped to BSD.. By the way I use to be a college teacher in Computer Science...

As a reference your starting to deal with people how have no way to explain things to a person in a simple minded way...

This is referred to as Keep it Simple Stupid or KISS in the computer world..

Best way to make sense out of what you don't understand and which most can't articulate is use 3 by 5 cards write down steps if necessary...

I don't know what frame of mind you learn in best....
30% of a class learns bye reading 30% learn by hands on 35% are a mixed bag between both.. 5% of a class those that are lost and need you to guide them through step by step...


Before you jump down this rabbit hole and fail at your goal...

You need to setup a easy learning method for yourself...

Watch Youtube videos if necessary on how install BSD, x11 etc...

Now far before you play with this OS I would go to freebsd forums... Ask a user if Freebsd supports that Video Card and Sound Card....


Mulsiphix that video card is one of the Newer Nvidia cards...

I'm not sure at this point if anyone has written a driver for the video card?

Usually it takes the Linux community 3 to 6 months after a release of a new video card to have support for both 2D effects and 3D effects...

Since these are Opensource drivers because Nvidia stated they will not release there code to the public...

Mulsiphix what earlier I was trying to get you to see by arguing with these users is they wanted to tell you how great the system is when all set up ,but didn't want to own up to the idea of showing how to set up BSD and were snobs to idea of helping a Windows user...


The same thing is happening in the Linux Community ,but people are getting well adjusted to idea of helping others.. It has been even difficult for linux users to get asked the same question 200 or 300 times..

What BSD users should think of is if there OS gets as Popular as Linux. It is going to take a community of BSD users to show other users to operate there system and they are going to have to be an openbook to the idea of TECH SUPPORT...

Own up to the idea of Failures in the past by BSD and strengths..

Like any OS there good at several things ,but fail at some things...

Any linux distro has its approach that is why there are so many linux distro's....

Some distro's are for Networking, Gaming, Security, Cutting edge software, Gnome, KDE, X window managers and so on...

For instance Right now SUSE is leading the way in developing ATI graphics card drivers as well as Linking there os to moblin to run on netbooks with intel chip sets.. Suse is also owned by Novell and is a great Networking platform...


Now this does not mean I want you to switch desktops if you came this far we are going the rest of way together even if this means I have to take my desktop partition it and install FreeBSD on it and walk you through step by step....

PS If you would have noticed earlier none are running a BSD OS when posting..

anomie is running a Mac OS.
FNPL7 is running a windows OS.
I'm running Linux Mint
jschiwal is running SUSE.

After scanning the posters on this site...
Most are using Ubuntu
1 fedora
1 gentoo


You have several Moderators giving advice like pixellany running Arch stating problems but uses package manager based off of Pacman known as yaourt to install KDE...

There are a lot of people pulling for you in here ,but none including me are running BSD????

Check my icon...that's OpenBSD-CURRENT haha. I tried to contact LQ.org to have a puffy logo added, but they basically had put a stop on it at that point.

OP: If KDE isn't stable, try moving to gnome, or fluxbox (very minimalistic/lightweight), xfce, or any of the other myriad desktop/window managers available on *nix.

@culaterout;

You might want to consider making your posts a bit more concise. I for one cannot follow all that you are trying to say. For example, could you translate this for us:
???

@Mulsiphix;

Apparently, I'm not the only one who wonders how you got off on the BSD track after all the advice you were given.......

I really do have a running BSD used to have 7.2 and now jumped to 8.0RC1 just to be curious. Im running it as a server, firewall/nat (packet filter), dividing with 2 external connections DSL and 100/100.

Can check with http://sauhu.tontut.fi

The browsing im doing with Winblows which i keep for gaming too.

The 7.2 was running stable without any problems.

Easy way for you would be downloading ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/re...SO-IMAGES/7.2/

ISO image, probably boot-only to get it on 1 disk (rest is fetched from FTP druing install). You go thru basic installation and get to loggin in and to console after all.

Just login as root do

then

youll get all the ports in /usr/ports

to get kde4 installed with it´s depencies etc, (takes a day or so from sources) but this is the simplest way to get going.

But as stated above if you want to go BSD (any reason why? What are your plans?) you should read/understand what are you doing.Also i don´t see any basic logs that we can see whats wrong and help you/yourself.

If your gonna use it as basic windowslike drag and point i suggest you use something like Ubuntu. to just get away with it.

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