Back to SUSE after PC BSD 1.4

open SUSE 10.3 is installed on my PC after trying PC BSD 1.4 and Ubuntu 7.10

BSD was very fast to install and I have had a feeling that all KDE desktop was faster with BSD than with SUSE 10.1 on the same PC. Istalling the HP Photosmart printer was piece of cake. Unfortunately there was serious problems which become a reason to remove this OS. Some of the software, for example KTorrent did not work on my PC. I was not able to manage the system for to find my FAT partition. Obviously there is a way to do this but you have to know it. The help in the forum of pcbsd.org was not what person can have in most of the linux forums.

Now I have downloaded the openSUSE 10.3 It was just one CD and not for or five or DVD like usual. Maybe this is typical for the open version. Installation was somewhat long - about hour and half. Unlike Ubuntu 7.10 SUSE 10.3 found my XP and overwrite the previously installed boot manager GAG with GRUB without problems. The desktop is with comfortable new features and works perfect. The installing of the all needed packages for to read mpeg and mp3 goes automatically unlike 10.1 where it is not so easy.

http://opensuse-community.org/Multimedia and voila;)))

SUSE 10.3 is perfect choice for beginner who will like to switch to Linux.

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Installing HP Photosmart D66160 with PC BSD 1.4

After trying to install HP Photosmart D6160 printer with PC BSD I have seen that driver for USB printers are missing in the list. After visiting the forum of www.pcbsd.org I found useful post by the user dracheflieger.

In short you have to make the steps described in the chapter 5 of the quick guide. That mean opening start menu-> settings-> system administration-> system manager->tasks and to press one after another the buttons "fetch system source" and "fetch ports".

After that logout->login open console-> su ->root password and type
cd /usr/ports/print/hplip && make install clean && rehash

BSD will download and install driver hplip for you. Im my case there was package conflict and I should remove nasty package with remove_pckg or something like this. By the way I got this tip from the console. The thing just work. Yuppie.

First experiences with PC BSD 1.4

I like to try always new things, so I decided to give a chance to BSD. My choice become PCBSD because it looks to me that it is special made for new users.
:))) BSD is absolutely free. Download something like 650 MB - just one CD. Only for language support you will need second one.
:))) After installing it on my hard drive on separate partition I noticed that BSD installation was really fast. Something like 20 minutes for.
:))) Second thing I noticed that BSD works very fast compare to SUSE 10.1 I have had before on my old laptop Toshiba with 1066 MHz with 256 shared RAM
:))) Third thing I noticed was that PCBSD 1.4 plays videofiles and DVD's out of the box. No hacking, recompiling, adding libraries etc. All this you have to do with SUSE beforre you watch videofiles. I think Ubuntu is the same. As some video/audio formats are licensed you have to install them apart.
:))) Installing software is peace of cake. All you may need you can find in the PBI library and install it with a few clicks unless you need something exotic.

So far everything was perfect. Now the bad surprises.

:((( The dual boot was somehow unable to find and to safe my WinXP even trying to boot with GAG failed. Sad massage was that windows/sys32/hal.dll is corrupted or missing. After searching for while in the net it was unlikely that I will get the problem solved. Fortunately I have backup of all my data. I am starting from the begining but tis time I completely formatted my 40 GB HDD. Then I made two FAT32 partitions 15 GB each and one 10 GB partition for BSD. I have Installed BSD again. Then I have installed XP again converting first partition in NTFS. Now I have dual boot wit GAG. Both systems are working but!
:((( BSD can read my NTFS partition with XP but is unable to write on it. SO far I know for now SUSE and Ubuntu are also not able to write on NTFS partitions but et least with SUSE I have been using FAT32 partition for to share files with Windows. Now it is not possible. I hope there is a solution for that.

And there is one more thing. PC BSD 1.4 is "Da Vinci" edition. I don't know what that mean but the icon of the start menu is very similar to those of firefox. Ball in flames or something. I prefer the devil instead.
Now I have to make my PC BSD to see FAT32 partitions and to print with HP Photosmart D6160. Hopefully.

Here it is

The spring of wisdom. No shit.