Subject: Re: How broken is Gnome on NetBSD?
To: None <oinkfreebiker@att.net>
From: Nigel Reed <nigel@nelgin.nu>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 09/18/2001 09:53:14
I use KDE2.1 from pkgsrc on 1.5X currently and apart from Netscape
locking up from time to time (as it does regardless of the platform)
I've not had any problems. Then again, I don't use KMail so I don't know
about that.

That said, if it wasn't for some stroke of luck, I'd have ditched
NetBSD a couple of months ago. I bought a Flexport which is supported
under NetBSD (so it says) but kept locking my system dead.

Jason Wright was actually porting the driver to OpenBSD when he saw
my PR and managed to fix the problem. Without Jason's help, NetBSD
would have been long gone.

The problem is that there is nobody to way to esculate issues or to have
someone who is accountable. PR 11337 is still open from Oct 29 2000
even though I updated the ticket

From: Nigel Reed <nigel@nelgin.nu>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc:  
Subject: Re: kern/11337 
Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 09:47:39 -0500


 Since going to 1.5.1_ALPHA I have beeen successful in using NFS - and
 since nobody bothered to contact me about this problem anyway, you
 might as well close it out.


Yes, I often ask myself...why. I guess...better the devil you know.

Regards
Nigel

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 02:30:52PM +0000, oinkfreebiker@att.net wrote:
> Is Gnome broken too on NetBSD? 
> 
> I've only had KDE2 up and running for just a few days; 
> and already I've found two places where that package 
> appears seriously broken. Admittedly, I had done "make 
> install" myself from source. But the most annoying 
> problem (Compose on KMail locking up) is exactly, 
> precisely the same problem that thwarted me utterly on 
> KDE 1.1.2 installed from binaries off Wasabi Systems 
> CDROM's onto NetBSD 1.5 not long ago. I only upgraded to 
> NetBSD 1.5 and KDE2 in order to escape that glitch. And 
> still, here it is again. All my time, then and now, 
> trying to get KDE up and running on NetBSD appears to 
> have been utterly wasted.
> 
> I do not care to waste my time like that again. I don't 
> have that much time to waste. If it happens to any such 
> extent again, I will abandon NetBSD -- and fully document 
> the extent of my deep and abiding frustration on the Web. 
> It will then be my pleasure to maintain a link in my 
> email signatures to that doc for at least a year. I may 
> permit my few current NetBSD Newbie How-To's to remain up 
> the web (for what they're worth) but will preface each 
> with a comment that I have abandoned NetBSD, and why. I 
> will also cough up however many dollars it takes to 
> submit that page with a commercial link-listing robot. I 
> have done it before: once in a dispute with my insurance 
> company; again in a difference of interpretation of a 
> contract with a roofer -- both to my complete 
> satisfaction.
> 
> Care to talk me out of that? Then give me a reason why I 
> should struggle any further with NetBSD. I want a 
> full-featured, graphical desktop. KDE2 looks to be well 
> and truly broken on NetBSD. So what about Gnome on 
> NetBSD? Who uses Gnome on NetBSD? How broken is Gnome on 
> NetBSD? And, given the fact that one of Gnome's 
> dependencies for NetBSD has been rolled back to a level 
> below that required by the current Gnome package for 
> NetBSD, how the hell is anyone supposed to install it? 
> even if it isn't half so broken as KDE?
> 
> If I can't get a decent GUI up and running on NetBSD 
> without a bunch of tedious workarounds, well...then I 
> will have learnt what the term "experimental" means 
> regarding the NetBSD OS. I will then have to abandon it 
> as just another failed "experiment" on my part.
> 
> I've got NetBSD installed on four separate machines. One 
> more week of this fruitless effort will be all it takes 
> to get me to wipe NetBSD completely off one of them and 
> put on FreeBSD instead. Then, if that has a decent GUI 
> desktop, unbroken, usefull for mail and archiving and 
> such...then the other three machines will be very soon to 
> follow. If not, then I'll try linux on that machine, with 
> like consequences.
> 
> If all fails, then I will just resign myself to Win2K, 
> which although no really to my tastes, at least lets me 
> know before-hand whether something at least CAN be made 
> to work how it should. It seems to me at this present 
> moment that Microsoft has nothing to fear.
> 
> Unhappily,
> 
> Gan Starling
> 
> --
> Mysterious Starling -- Rarest 
> Extinct Bird
>      _         
>    <(+)__        Gan Uesli Starling 
>      ((__/)=-    Kalamazoo, MI, USA
>       `||`      
>        ++        http://starling.ws 
> 
> Newbie-2-Newbie NetBSD Unix How-To Pages at... 
> http://om-ah-hum.com/share/gus_netbsd_index.html
>                     

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