From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Apr 6 15:48:14 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7773F37B401 for ; Sun, 6 Apr 2003 15:48:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rasmus.uib.no (rasmus.uib.no [129.177.13.13]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5632243F75 for ; Sun, 6 Apr 2003 15:48:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from are-harald.brenne@econ.uib.no) Received: from (billfish) [129.177.43.16] 4.12) id 192Ivm-0002iv-00; Mon, 07 Apr 2003 00:48:06 +0200 Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 00:48:05 +0200 From: Are-Harald Brenne To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Message-Id: <20030407004805.0000112c.are-harald.brenne@econ.uib.no> In-Reply-To: <000f01c2fc66$55958040$c601a8c0@plasma> References: <20030406172035.GA45332@netpublishing.com> <000401c2fc62$061306e0$c601a8c0@plasma> <20030406175142.GA45554@netpublishing.com> <000f01c2fc66$55958040$c601a8c0@plasma> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.10claws (GTK+ 1.3.0; Win32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-checked-clean: by exiscan on rasmus X-Scanner: a086326a112c2a7e317511d97929a6b2 http://tjinfo.uib.no/virus.html X-UiB-SpamFlag: NO UIB: -16 hits, 8.0 required X-UiB-SpamReport: spamassassin found; * -6.6 -- Has a valid-looking References header * -3.3 -- Has a In-Reply-To header * 0.7 -- BODY: Contains a line >=199 characters long * -7.0 -- Message received from UIB Subject: Re: Brilliant and very useful for FreeBSD, IMHO X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2003 22:48:14 -0000 I went from Windows to Mandrake and then FreeBSD half a year ago. One important reason for me to chose FreeBSD over some Linux distro was that the Linux "scene" is fragmented, but there is only one FreeBSD. I am a computer hobbyist. I think the handbook can be intimidating for new users (it was for me). Installing FreeBSD looks like a hard and complicated procedure, but it is really quite easy and straight forward. I think perhaps a "pocket handbook" aimed to get new users going with an installation and then refering them to where they can learn more could attract more users. Writing more documentation is probably easier than writing new code :-P I had to struggle a bit to set up XF86Config and internet access in the beginning. An X frontend to ports and packages would also be usefull I think. It could perhaps be easy to let sysinstall set up one of the package ftp mirrors as a remote package site automatically, with an entry in make.conf. What if sysinstall included a menu option for "newbie", which didn't ask a lot of questions, sat up X and internet and installed software like KDE, OOo and mlplayer and perhaps some system administration frontends? cheers, Are-Harald