Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 21:29:05 +0100 From: Beni <beni@brinckman.info> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why is sysinstall considered end-of-life? Message-ID: <200701102129.06130.beni@brinckman.info> In-Reply-To: <004401c733bf$02c47cb0$3c01a8c0@coolf89ea26645> References: <73387c420701071410p710a3436gdecda61d57643950@mail.gmail.com> <45A18615.9000900@netscape.net> <004401c733bf$02c47cb0$3c01a8c0@coolf89ea26645>
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On Tuesday 09 January 2007 08:21, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Tore Lund" <toreld@netscape.net> > To: <questions@freebsd.org> > Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 3:45 PM > Subject: Re: Why is sysinstall considered end-of-life? > > > Robert Huff wrote: > > > (Personally, I think there are also points where the correct user > > > behavior is not intuitively obvious.) > > > > An understatement. There are situations where sysinstall is positively > > quixotic. I don't mind the simple character-based interface. But I do > > find it worrying that I sometimes cannot know what sysinstall will do > > next. In any case, this is bad publicity for FreeBSD since sysinstall > > is the first bit of FreeBSD they encounter. > > All of this is true. > > > Time and again we hear rumors about a new installation program. Is it > > actually nearing completion? Keep in mind that many of us do not even > > consider getting involved as long as we believe a better program is > > under way. > > There is no new installation program underway. > > This comes up every year or so on the various discussion lists, everyone > bashes sysinstall and claims it makes FreeBSD look bad and when are > we going to get a replacement, etc. The arguments die away when faced > with the following cold realities: > > 1) You can probably get consensus from everyone that sysinstall is ugly > and needs replacement. But your never going to get any consensus on > what the replaement should look like. And any replacement is going to > have places where the user cannot know what it's going to do next, that > is just the nature of install programs - it is due to the fact that > different people > interpret things differently. What is obvious to you isn't obvious to > someone > else. And, when is the install program going to cross the line between > acting as a install program and acting as a training video? > > Review the steps needed to install a self-signed SSL certificate into > Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, and then come back and tell me that > those steps are more intuitive than sysinstall. Yeah, right. Face the > facts, boys. Every year, computers get more complex to operate, and > every year, the Average User is paying more and more to have a tech > set the computer up for them. Open your eyes and look around. People > think nothing of paying $30 to have a tech install Microsoft Office on > their new Windows PC for God's sake. > > Who really is sysinstall's audience? The average l-user? Or the average > technician? If it's the average tech, then who the hell cares how ugly > sysinstall is? You think sysinstall is bad, you ought to see the > diagnostic interface > the average auto mechanic has to use to troubleshoot your car. If you are > not the ultimate end-user for the FreeBSD system your installing, then > you don't have any moral ground to make a call for pussifying the FreeBSD > install program. I can tell you that for myself, every FreeBSD system I've > installed in the last year and a half has been for OTHERS to use, NOT ME. > > 2) There's an immense amount of effort that has gone into sysinstall and > it's libraries. Your talking about taking on an old, established program > that > is pretty throughly debugged, a program that is like an octopus in the > amount of icky, ugly mucking around with config files and such that it > does, and replacing this with a new program that is going to have all of > the intelligence and institutional knowledge in it that the old program > does. And furthermore if this replacement is to ever get traction among the > userbase it's going to have to work PERFECTLY in the FIRST version that is > released, otherwise everyone is just going to turn their back on it and > keep using the existing sysinstall. > > 3) The largest complaint about sysinstall is that it's not graphical. The > problem is that a graphical installation program has some -severe- > constraints on it. First, it has to work in ALL instances. That means, > 640x480x16 colors VGA screen. You have a lot of people out there > installing on systems that have, for example, monitors with inadequate > horizontal/vertical frequency ranges and very capabable video cards, > unless you force the X-server to use the original VGA resolution, it's > going to overdrive those monitors and the user is going to see a black > screen when the installation program comes up. And the only way FreeBSD > is going to get a graphical anything is by using Xorg, and FreeBSD does > not maintain that distribution - so we are now dependent on the Xorg > group writing their code with no bugs for our installation program to work. > > 4) Installation programs by and large are not "fun" programs to work > on. Most developers avoid them. They are thankless tasks - you > don't hear squat for thanks from anyone when they work, but you make > the least mistake and everyone is on your neck. > > 5) Finally, sysinstall is a one-shot program. You use it once, the system > is > installed, and you never have to touch it again. There's lots of other > things > in FreeBSD that are critical things that will stop an installation cold. > Such > as lack of device support for some new piece of hardware. These things > are much higher on the priority list than replacing sysinstall, a working > program. > > Ted Ok, but why not have the two ? Keep sysinstall text-based and have the possibility to have a (more) graphical install ? Desktopbsd and PC-bsd seem to manage it not so badly. That could keep everybody happy, from the tech installer to the curious newbie :-) Just a thought... Beni.
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