Desperately need some success

[Tom Cloutier]

Admittedly I am a rank amateur when it comes to FreeBSD. I have spent 
hours trying to get 8.1 with gnome installed. By way of contrast, the 
installation of PCBSD went flawlessly and took about an hour. 
Unfortunately, I don't want to run KDE or PCBSD.

At this point I can boot to the green leaf of death with a FreeBSD8.1 
splash screen displayed and a toolbar at the bottom with the Access, 
clock, and shutdown icons displayed. The Access tools work, but shutdown 
does not. I can change the text message under the icon in splash screen 
by clicking with mouse.

What do you suggest? It seems I am close, but surer would like to get 
beyond endless installation trials.

Thanks.
Tom Cloutier