Hello from UK

[antony]

Have been using GhostBSD Xfce for quite a few months now and really enjoy using it on my Acer Aspire 5 A514-54 laptop with 11th Gen Intel i7-1165G7 cpu.

For several years I have used Linux Mint and also Manjaro and Debian Linux, but read about & was impressed with the BSD way of doing things so decided to try GhostBSD. First experiences booting GhostBSD Xfce from a usb stick were mixed - desktop appeared ok at first, but frames of dialogue boxes etc were not as expected - strange lines where they shouldn't be! and the like, so didn't actually install.

Kept an eye on the project and saw in more recent versions that Xfce was now useable as a desktop so installed it and have never looked back!

Have tried the Mate version of GhostBSD, but found it a bit laggy and cumbersome compared to the sleak, flexible & fast (rendering) Xfce version.

Cannot get wi-fi running on this laptop but ok as I tether my smartphone by usb-c for internet - good enough for my needs and GhostBSD gives faster internet than wi-fi connected linux.

Have found the installer very easy and fast to use and like the additional desktop tools GhostBSD provides - Backup Station, Software Station and Update Station - though I prefer updating using command-line so I can track process & see details.

All in all I really enjoy using GhostBSD and look forward to each new update! Thanks very much to the team for doing such a good job - your efforts are much appreciated.

BTW please could you update the website to reflect the latest 24.04.2 version - there is no mention in 'News' and in the 'Download' section the 'Release announcement' link still points to 24.04.1 version. Other than that update works really well!

[neville]

Hi. Antony. Thanks for using GhostBSD! Thanks for the positive feedback. Very kind of you. It doesn't happen often. Thanks for the heads up about the version issue.
BTW What wifi card does your laptop use?

[antony]

Hi Neville, thanks for your reply - the small dedicated GhostBSD team deserve praise! Updates from a giant monolith like Microsoft or Apple might seem run-of-the-mill, just something you apply, but updates from a small team of dedicated enthusiasts who sacrifice their time and effort mean a lot more and demonstrate that GhostBSD is still current, cared-about and functional.

This laptop has a MediaTek MT7921 wifi adaptor which is not currently supported in Free/GhostBSD yet I believe!

Not too concerned about this, but just a bit tedious having to call up this line from the terminal each time I login:

sudo ifconfig ue0 up | sudo dhclient ue0 | sudo backlight 25

Do you happen to know of a way I could automate this without having to enter my pwd each time? I tried various things - adding lines to various config files in /etc, but couldn't get anything to work. Any help much appreciated.

[neville]

Strange you shouldn't have to do that command to get internet working. Did you set up internet by clicking the network icon on the task bar?
Could you please post the output of

cat /etc/rc.conf

Also we have a telegram channel. You may get help faster there

[neville]

Strange you shouldn't have to do that command to get internet working. Did you set up internet by clicking the network icon on the task bar?
Could you please post the output of

cat /etc/rc.conf

Also we have a telegram channel. You may get help faster there

[antony]

I think these commands are needed to connect to a tethered Android smartphone (Samsung A34 5G) - GhostBSD seems to load the drivers required anyway, and you just needs to invoke them if required.

Usually on a BSD system you would need to add the following to get Android tethering support, but GBSD seems to load them by default:

- Add following lines to /boot/loader.conf:
if_urndis_load="YES"
if_cdce_load="YES"
if_ipheth_load="YES"

On a Linux system I can usually connect to my smartphone just by clicking the Network Manager icon & selecting my phone from the menu, typing in password and instantly connecting via wifi. On GBSD there are no networking options available by clicking the icon unfortunately.

Here is my /etc/rc.conf as requested:

zfs_enable="YES"
kld_list="linux linux64 cuse fusefs /boot/modules/i915kms.ko"
linux_enable="YES"
ntpd_enable="YES"
ntpd_sync_on_start="YES"
devfs_enable="YES"
devfs_system_ruleset="devfsrules_common"
dbus_enable="YES"
lightdm_enable="YES"
webcamd_enable="YES"
cupsd_enable="YES"
avahi_daemon_enable="YES"
avahi_dnsconfd_enable="YES"
moused_enable="YES"
ipfw_enable="YES"
firewall_enable="YES"
ifconfig_re0="DHCP"
ifconfig_ue0="DHCP"
keymap="uk.kbd"
hostname="Acer-i7-Laptop"
kldload_vbox="vboxdrv"
vboxnet_enable="YES"

[antony]

Would quickly also like to add that I was very recently trying out KDE-Plasma 6 desktop on Manjaro Linux whilst tethering my smartphone with a cable, and it connected automatically without any need for input from my side.