From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Nov 30 22:53:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id WAA12294 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 30 Nov 1997 22:53:40 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from mother.sneaker.net.au (akm@mother.sneaker.net.au [203.30.3.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id WAA12282 for ; Sun, 30 Nov 1997 22:53:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from akm@mother.sneaker.net.au) Received: (from akm@localhost) by mother.sneaker.net.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA22510; Mon, 1 Dec 1997 18:00:19 +1100 (EST) From: Andrew Kenneth Milton Message-Id: <199712010700.SAA22510@mother.sneaker.net.au> Subject: Re: Out of Box experience (Was: Re: How is selection made of what goes into CDrom?) To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 18:00:19 +1100 (EST) Cc: garbanzo@hooked.net, nectar@NECTAR.COM, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <19737.880955544@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Nov 30, 97 09:52:24 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk +-----[ Jordan K. Hubbard ]------------------------------ | | > That was me who suggested _that_. I still think that a graphical | > counterpart of sorts to sysinstall or its successor, (which you are | > writing right? ;-) ) is something, that would certianly add a little bit | > of polish to FBSD, and perhaps increase its userbase. While I'm kinda | | Sure would, but the bootstrapping issues are hard. To use an X based | anything, be it Qt or (to be more politically correct) Tk based, | requires that you get the user fully into a running X environment | first and that's often very hard, especially if the user in question | happens to be missing a couple of blades on his propeller, if you get | my drift. Geez it took me a long time to find a '.' to break d8) Does graphical necessarily have to be X ? I know that a console gui based one means it probably can't run under X easily (or can you?). That'll make remote sysinstalls a pain if you can't. Don't forget there's also a curses version of Tk which does a fair job. The SCO (boo hiss) system tool works this way, if you run it from a console it uses the curses version, otherwise you get the pretty X one. So your development of a dual-mode sysinstall using Tk would (almost) fall out for free. -- ,-_|\ SneakerNet | Andrew Milton | GSM: +61(41)6 022 411 / \ P.O. Box 154 | akm@sneaker.net.au | Fax: +61(2) 9746 8233 \_,-._/ N Strathfield +--+----------------------+---+ Ph: +61(2) 9746 8233 v NSW 2137 | Low cost Internet Solutions |