After the excitement of the PXE install I’ve now managed to get the entire system updated, updated the ports tree and then installed (via ports) X windows and the gnome desktop. These are enormous installs and took a while (especially as my net connection was dying at random intervals) but have now been completed.

As with all these things, it’s 2 steps forward, 1 back as gnome is taking an age to start and the hints offered for fixing it via the handbook have yet to prove succesful. Once started it was also not able to start any applications I asked it to, which is quite annoying and downright unhelpful!

After some fudging with the /etc/hosts file and the hostname it eventually managed to sort itself out, though the startup time is still quite long.

Next stop is to start sorting out the menus and some usability bits and pieces.