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Date:      Sun, 19 Oct 1997 16:25:44 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Guy Helmer <ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu>
To:        Amancio <hasty@rah.star-gate.com>
Cc:        "chat@FreeBSD.ORG" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Linux vs. the rest of the world, poor OS comparison on web p 
Message-ID:  <Pine.HPP.3.96.971019155919.19161A-100000@popeye.cs.iastate.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199710191853.LAA01282@rah.star-gate.com>

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On Sun, 19 Oct 1997, Amancio wrote:

> For the first time, I installed slackware3.3  on my spare ide drive.
> For starters, I was totally confused by the installation procedure,

I too recently had to do a couple of slackware 3.3 installs.

I was surprised that there didn't seem to be a way to FTP the 
installation packages during install time, a la FreeBSD.  It appeared the
best way to install was to FTP the installation files into a FAT
filesystem (i.e., drive C: in DOS).  And how about the bazillion
installation boot disks from which to choose?

As for the kernel, it really surprised me that I couldn't just copy a new
kernel into place and have it boot (LILO must keep a table of addresses
of the kernel's disk blocks for INT 13 access at boot time?). 

> Not sure if linux has a network install package however I couldn't
> find it.

Are you refering to the "n" package for TCP/IP?

> Slackware left me with the impression that it was too slanted to
> hackers and for the life of me I can't figure out why people 
> prefer linux to Freebsd -- it seems that Freebsd will be easier
> on newbies.

Ditto.  I also didn't like the requirement that one had to stay in front
of the terminal to answer "yes/no" questions for each optional part of the
packages (it appears this can be automated, but I prefer FreeBSD's
approach of interactively pre-selecting the pieces before the install
begins). 

Guy Helmer, Computer Science Graduate Student - ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu
Iowa State University               http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~ghelmer
Research Assistant, Scalable Computing Laboratory, Ames Laboratory




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