From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Nov 9 18:39:58 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2400516A4DA for ; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 18:39:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from astro.systems.pipex.net (astro.systems.pipex.net [62.241.163.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E9BFA13C4A6 for ; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 18:39:57 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from [192.168.23.2] (62-31-10-181.cable.ubr05.edin.blueyonder.co.uk [62.31.10.181]) by astro.systems.pipex.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D87FE000709; Fri, 9 Nov 2007 18:39:51 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <4734A977.8030205@dial.pipex.com> Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:39:51 +0000 From: Alex Zbyslaw User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-GB; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20061205 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Aryeh M. Friedman" References: <0JR7007833LW9A50@VL-MH-MR001.ip.videotron.ca> <473492E7.9050005@cs.okstate.edu> <47349E24.7040305@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <47349E24.7040305@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: install X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:39:58 -0000 Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: >>complaints are not accompanied by solutions. The installer has been >>a bikeshed for many years; everyone seems to know what color it >>should be, how many windows it should have, how many doors to >>install, what type of lighting it needs, how many penguins should >>be accommodated in the rafters, and what relative orientation it >>should have to the earth's magnetic field; yet the most vocal of >>these people naturally have no contributions to make towards the >>installer's actual codebase. >> >> > >I think the only change needed for the time being (immediate fix) is >to move to DVD being the prefered medium (the rest can wait) > > This is *not* a fix for most FreeBSD users; rather it would be a retrograde step. If you have a decent enough internet connection to download a DVD, then you will use less bandwidth by downloading CD 1 and installing all your software from packages or ports. If you install more than a week after the medium was created, then you'll also get up-to-date versions of that software rather that whatever version happened to be current when the CD was made (or the port freeze went into effect). DVDs might be the norm for Linux distributions like Fedora where the versions of all the software you get are defined by the particular release, but with FreeBSD and ports/packages that has never been the case. For users with poor internet, then yes, I can see the advantage of a DVD over 4 CDs, but is that a majority requiring an immediate fix and a change of preferred medium? I think not. Me, even with several reasonably fancy PCs, have no DVD burning capability whatsoever, and I doubt I'm alone in that. --Alex