reinstalling GhostBSD [not a question, just my impression]

ninos

I've been using GhostBSD Xfce for more than two years,
installed raw metal on a second hand Thinkpad.
Because I bloated my disk with useless stuff ,
I decided to erase everything and reinstall GhostBSD MATE.

So, I made a new live USB with GhostBSD using impression, on a linux mint system.
and I reinstalled GhostBSD on the Tinkpad in just a few minutes!
As usual, everything works flawlessly.
The whole procedure was a nice surprise,
and I also learnt a few things about the MATE desktop,
which I hadn't used before.

Overall impression?
GhostBSD just gets better and better.
And it's so easy to use, even i the user sis NOT tech savvy, like me.

brianthehughes

Glad to hear it!

My reinstalls are usually the result of too many experiments and not enough backups.

I’m a big fan of Mate window snapping, while I also enjoy XFCE drag to workspace at monitor edges. I should find a way to have both.

Robin

I'm a kind of Xfce fanboy, but I end up using a bunch of Gnome apps that misbehave a little. But if there is a metapackage to install the GhostBSD MATE and I'll try those apps in a MATE session to see if they still behave "badly."

vimanuelt

Robin Here is a list of additional packages needed for GhostBSD's MATE DE.
brisk-menu
cursor-dmz-theme
dconf-editor
freedesktop-sound-theme
ghostbsd-mate
plank
station-tweak

ninos

vimanuelt

why are they needed?
how can they be installed?

vimanuelt

Those packages are used in the MATE manifest file for the MATE iso. If you installed from the XFCE iso, you will not have them by default.

You can install the missing packages by executing this command:
sudo pkg install brisk-menu cursor-dmz-theme dconf-editor freedesktop-sound-theme ghostbsd-mate plank station-tweak

Robin

Above commands executed, all the software installed. Logged out of Xfce session, hoping to be offered a new MATE session but it did not appear as an option. Rebooted - still no option to choose a MATE session.

I reckon I could try just downloading the MATE .iso and trying that out to see what MATE is like. I wonder if Geary will work on MATE, that's all I was really curious about. I hate Thunderbird, and Evolution is "just okay," but Geary - when it was running on an older version of GhostBSD - was really nice.

Perhaps one of you MATE users could try installing Geary and tell me if it loads? That might be less trouble than me starting all over again just to find out of my "issue" is unique to the Xfce version.

brianthehughes

Robin

This morning's coffee project:

Install fresh VirtualBox machine, GhostBSD-XFCE 25.01-R14.2p1
Strip away (pkg delete and pkg autoremove)
-- amd/radeon firmware (since we're in a vm)
-- rhythmbox
-- evolution (I want to start clean once we are in MATE)
Let's run some updates to get to 25.01-R14.2p2
-- pkg update && pkg upgrade
Let's grab MATE
sudo pkg install ghostbsd-mate brisk-menu cursor-dmz-theme dconf-editor freedesktop-sound-theme station-tweak
-- looks like we have to unset Vital on ghostbsd-xfce-settings-1.0 to allow ghostbsd-mate-settings-2.0
-- sudo pkg set -v 0 ghostbsd-xfce-settings
sudo pkg install ghostbsd-mate brisk-menu cursor-dmz-theme dconf-editor freedesktop-sound-theme station-tweak
sudo pkg install geary
sudo pkg install evolution
log out
choose MATE
login

Considerations

Having both of the following may compromise desktop environment user experience. At the very least, it's going to mess with Default Applications

Mousepad vs Pluma
Caja vs Thunar
XFCE Screenshot vs MATE Screenshot
MATE Dictionary vs XFCE's Dictionary
Atril Document Viewer vs Document Viewer
Xarchiver vs Engrampa Archive Manager

Evolution

Success 🎆

Geary

No joy 🤢 report and check upstream 🙂

ghost@ghost-ghostbsd ~> sudo geary 
Password:
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate
MESA: error: ZINK: failed to choose pdev
libEGL warning: egl: failed to create dri2 screen
'-avx512er' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
'-avx512pf' is not a recognized feature for this target (ignoring feature)
*[wrn] 14:37:21.0619 geary:application-certificate-manager.vala:87: No GCR store found, GCR certificate pinning unavailable
*[wrn] 14:37:21.0620 geary:application-certificate-manager.vala:91: GCR store is not RW, GCR certificate pinning unavailable
![err] 14:37:22.0138 libsoup:libsoup2 symbols detected. Using libsoup2 and libsoup3 in the same process is not supported.
fish: Job 1, 'sudo geary' terminated by signal SIGTRAP (Trace or breakpoint trap)

Robin

Thank you, @brianthehughes !

I just needed to know if Geary is broken on more than just Xfce. It is, obviously, so I will include that in my "problem report." I purged all the MATE stuff, and booted into a prior Snapshot just to be sure I didn't miss anything.

Geary worked before the new release, if that offers any clue. Gnome is well aware of the issue, apparently, and it doesn't seem to be unique to GhostBSD or FreeBSD.

No wonder it was forked into the "pantheon-mail." That is available by Flatpak, but I don't think Flatpaks work on GhostBSD, do they?

ericbsd

Robin No Flatpacks does not work on GhostBSD/FreeBSD.

ericbsd

Yeah, Gnome made some changes that broke things on FreeBSD and GhostBSD.

Robin

Many thanks to you both, gentlemen!