Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 08:37:31 +0100 (CET) From: Micke Josefsson <mj@isy.liu.se> To: igorr@crosswinds.net Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: beginners with bsd Message-ID: <XFMail.001101083731.mj@isy.liu.se> In-Reply-To: <20001101100138.G10542@linux.rainbow>
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On 01-Nov-00 Igor Roboul wrote: > On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 10:19:40AM +0400, Rino Mardo wrote: >> I concur. FreeBSD is not for the faint of heart. You might want to try >> Storm Linux or SuSe 7 which are far, far better than RedHat or Mandrake. > This is not Linux list, but for easy of use I do not recommend both > Storm and RedHat. I never used Mandrake and SuSE (I just cant download SuSE > ISO, because it is not avaliable). I have setup Caldera OpenLinux eDesktop2.4 > on my girfriend's PC at home. She has Windows on it too, but can use > Linux for tasks like reading e-mail or browsing. > Caldera's OpenLinux is very easy to install, but FreeBSD is not hard to > install > too. GUI installation is not same as "easy" installation. > So, if he does not need working desktop publishing workstation _NOW_ :-), I > still recommend FreeBSD, just wait for 4.2-RELEASE, and ask your friend > to help you. > But, generally, if I talk about friends, it is better install something, for > which you have "live person near you" :-) Exaktly my point in another thread some time ago. What a newbie needs best is someone to put his/her questions to. If you are into BSD then recommend BSD, if you are into Linux then recommend the same dist as you use yourself. It can be very annoying for a newbie to see how helpless his computer literate friend is with an OS he is not used to. Apart from that I'd recommend FreeBSD before anything else. Recently I had the opportunity to introduce a guest professor to FreeBSD. She had really no computer training from the sysadmins view, but was very keen to learn. So we spent some time partitioning disks, discussing the pros and cons of partition sizes and even opened up an old disk drive for fun. All this she learned a lot from. But when it comes to do the actual installation of FreeBSD the barrage of questions was to much for her in the end. I made a trial installation session with her and then she tried at least three times to do it herself, but failed to answer the correct thing onto just one or two questions, with a non-working system as a result. A co-worker made her try RedHat 6.2, it installed as a breeze and actually also setup the correct X-server for her. I have pointed out that RedHat puts more stuff on the drive than one (I anyway) would want, but at the end of the day, disk space is ubiquitus and cheap. And the pleasure of having got the system up and running gives her better feedback, than the FreeBSD sysinstall does. Personally I really, really like the port/packages device and also, being a minimalist, I like to have a small system first and then extend it with the programs *I* want to be there not what anyone else think I should be using. All in all. The problem seems to have been sysinstall here. Or anyway the program to perform the initial installation. Imagine that sysinstall is used for post-install configuration only or installation for the advanced user then another couple of boot-diskettes could be used to a more user friendly installation interface for newcomers or any 'generic' user. (Personally I do not like the idea of a generic user, but some people, specially the ones just trying FreeBSD for the first time and are not that computer savvy might find this handy). Cheers, /Micke > -- > Igor Roboul, Unix System Administrator & Programmer @ sanatorium "Raduga", > Sochi, Russia > http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=304744 > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message ---------------------------------- Michael Josefsson, MSEE mj@isy.liu.se This message was sent by XFMail running on FreeBSD 3.5-STABLE ---------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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