From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Jul 11 21:45: 6 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mail.integratus.com (miami.integratus.com [63.209.2.83]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D2CBA37BA65 for ; Tue, 11 Jul 2000 21:45:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jar@integratus.com) Received: (qmail 1264 invoked from network); 12 Jul 2000 04:45:02 -0000 Received: from kungfu.integratus.com (HELO integratus.com) (172.20.5.168) by tortuga1.integratus.com with SMTP; 12 Jul 2000 04:45:02 -0000 Message-ID: <396BF7CD.C9D80CCA@integratus.com> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 21:45:01 -0700 From: Jack Rusher Organization: Integratus X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" Cc: Chuck Robey , obrien@FreeBSD.ORG, Sheldon Hearn , arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Knobs for optional software... References: <396BF343.B0A431DF@vangelderen.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" wrote: > > Why isn't a sysinstall knob sufficient to install the > LPR of choice? Such a knob seems to work fine for X > and the various desktops (KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker)[3]. I think the knob approach is an excellent way to go. It seems to me that the best installer for most people's needs would: o install almost nothing by default o have knobs for nearly everything o have "bundle" packages that group things together o when a user requests a bundle, ask which (say) print system they want (query on duplicates) We have something like that now with the "User, Developer, Kernel Developer, etc" choice for which distributions to drop, so why not do the same thing for install packaging? (I mean, aside from the huge amount of work involved). We would, of course, need a little more package metadata to make this anything but a maintenance nightmare, but I think some XML and a clever architecture could work out pretty well. There has been some interesting talk lately about setting up a truly "generic" kernel that loads all drivers from a set of modules at boot time. It seems to me like the whole project is moving towards nice cut points for all system components, so why not plan for it across the board? Just my $0.02. Thanks, -- Jack Rusher, Senior Engineer | mailto:jar@integratus.com Integratus, Inc. | http://www.integratus.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message