[PC-BSD Testing] PC-BSD 7.1 Alpha1 is up!

[Bill Leeper]

A few quick comments. This version as of now is pretty much useless  
for me. It installs just fine, but from there it goes downhill.

I have a nVidia 8500 video card so I may be running into the problems  
you talked about.

When I boot to the video setup screen it does not automatically detect  
my card. It defaults to vesa with a resolution of 1024x768 but the  
monitor is really 1600x1200. It is extremely difficult to change  
either the driver or the resolution. When I click on the drop down  
arrow the selection box opens but as soon as I move the mouse off the  
arrow the box closes up. I did find that my using the cursor keys the  
selection would move but you can't see it move. You have to move it  
and then click the mouse and the box will close with the resolution  
selected that you couldn't see.   :-)   Anyway, by trial and error I  
managed to select the nVidia driver and the resolution.

When I clicked next it tried to set the driver and resolution but came  
back with an error message about failing in the attempt. When I tried  
the vesa driver I was actually able to boot into 7.1, but I still had  
to go through the trial and error method to select vesa and the  
resolution I wanted. When I finally got booted into 7.1 the top 1" of  
the screen was corrupted video of all different colors. It was as if  
the whole thing was moved down the screen by about that much. The task  
bar at the bottom was off the screen. I could actually make the menu  
pop up by moving the mouse clear to the bottom in the correct place  
and clicking. So I was able to bring up the menu but I could never see  
the task bar.

The final major problem was that everything was incredibly slow. I  
have never seen PCBSD run this slow. When I opened the settings it  
took a long time. Once in there none of the items would open when I  
double clicked on them so I could not even try to change any of the  
settings.

Anyway, I will do some more playing and get back with you.


On Feb 6, 2009, at 10:49 AM, Kris Moore wrote:

>
> Hey all,
>
> Sorry it took so long to get this out and ready, the Xorg update to  
> 7.4
> caused a new slew of problems which I had to fix before even getting  
> us
> to alpha quality. Anyway, here's the DVD ISO for 32bit to play with:
>
> ftp://ftp.pcbsd.org/pub/alpha-iso/PCBSD7.1-ALPHA1-x86-DVD.iso
> MD5 (PCBSD7.1-ALPHA1-x86-DVD.iso) = 1de22b5129211e745ec53bb9fceea7fd
>
> Highlights:
>
> FreeBSD 7.1-Stable
> Xorg 7.4
> KDE 4.2
>
>
> NOTE:
>
> This is ALPHA quality, expect bugs, but please report them to help us
> improve the software. This will require a fresh install, the upgrade
> portion will be working later on, after we get our new System  
> Installer
> committed and included.
>
> Thanks for testing!
>
> --
> Kris Moore
> PC-BSD Software
> _______________________________________________
> Testing mailing list
> Testing at lists.pcbsd.org
> http://lists.pcbsd.org/mailman/listinfo/testing

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