From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Oct 19 14:25:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA02928 for chat-outgoing; Sun, 19 Oct 1997 14:25:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat) Received: from cs.iastate.edu (root@cs.iastate.edu [129.186.3.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA02920 for ; Sun, 19 Oct 1997 14:25:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu) Received: from popeye.cs.iastate.edu (popeye.cs.iastate.edu [129.186.3.4]) by cs.iastate.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA29399; Sun, 19 Oct 1997 16:25:46 -0500 (CDT) Received: from localhost (ghelmer@localhost) by popeye.cs.iastate.edu (8.8.7/8.7.1) with SMTP id QAA21139; Sun, 19 Oct 1997 16:25:45 -0500 (CDT) X-Authentication-Warning: popeye.cs.iastate.edu: ghelmer owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 16:25:44 -0500 (CDT) From: Guy Helmer To: Amancio cc: "chat@FreeBSD.ORG" Subject: Re: Linux vs. the rest of the world, poor OS comparison on web p In-Reply-To: <199710191853.LAA01282@rah.star-gate.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk 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