Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 14:23:01 -0800 From: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby) To: avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au, jkh@time.cdrom.com Cc: patrick@xinside.com, config@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sun Workshop compiler vs. GCC? Message-ID: <199702152223.OAA05098@lightside.com>
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Jordan Hubbard writes: > > A lot of people here will disagree with me, perhaps, but when I look at > > the bootup screen for Solaris2, I see a finish built for users who don't > > know or care about hardware details etc (makes FreeBSD and others look > > like "hacks"). If I could, I'd advocate that the free unixes have a > > similar quiet boot as default and a "verbose" option to see all the junk > > For those of us who've never seen a Solaris2 machine boot up, could > you perhaps tell us (though config@freebsd.org would be perhaps a > better mailing list on which to do it) what it looks like and what > about it you found so attractive? Nothing magical about the Solaris boot sequence, it simply redirects the hardware probing messages to syslogd by default. Imagine the FreeBSD boot sequence with the white (kernel) text removed, and the gray (rc script) text remaining. If you want to enable the messages, you can boot with "-v". BTW, SunOS behaves the same as FreeBSD here, and so does Linux. The BSD behavior has an advantage if you are bringing up new hardware, although if you know about "-v", they're both the same. And I agree that the Solaris method looks "cleaner" once you have a properly configured system and don't need the messages anymore. But I have a hard time seeing it as "more professional", just "different". I would argue that the average SPARC user doesn't know or care about hardware details, but considering the several complaints to this list about the severe difficulty in bringing Solaris/x86 up, I would argue that a PC user MUST know and care about hardware details in order to bring UNIX up, period. Unless you're buying a turnkey FreeBSD system, this info WILL be beneficial to you at some point. Therefore, I'd recommend NOT to change FreeBSD because if you do, you'll have to document "-v" and you'll see a LOT more mailing list questions when people don't know whether or not their hardware got probed. While we're on the topic, that reminds me of the Sun Netra boot sequence, which plays .AU files of a woman saying "The Netra is now being configured" and "The Netra is now online," or something to that effect, while the rc scripts are running. Now anything that makes UNIX seem like the computer from Star Trek gets a vote in my book! Does anyone want to volunteer for the FreeBSD voiceovers? ;) One final comment about Solaris: Despite the rest of the boot sequence, the CDE login screen really DOES look professional, and so does the "Welcome to Solaris" screen in eight languages with the big Solaris logo that shows up while CDE is logging you in, (the same logo appears if you start OpenWindows outside of CDE). Out of curiosity, what did XInside use for this logo screen in the FreeBSD port of CDE? If it's a generic CDE logo, I suggestyou find some artist to create a custom full-screen FreeBSD logo for them to bundle into the next version of CDE. Now _that_ would be cool! > There is *nothing* about the current FreeBSD installation which is > frozen in stone, and frankly I never expected it to last 2+ years > looking just like it does now - I figured we'd have a totally > different installation by now. Too many fires, too few hours in the > day I guess. :-) I think the original author was complaining about the boot sequence, not the installation program. If you want FreeBSD to look more "professional", you can do any combination of the following: 1) VGA splash screen at boot, with clearly-visible instructions to bypass it (and see the regular hardware probe messages printing underneath). 2) X-based installation program, including a fall-back text version for non-VGA users and a menu-based XFree86 setup program (some Linux distributions are already doing this, right?) 3) Customized FreeBSD startup logo during XFree86 and CDE logins. 4) Audio files to play while FreeBSD is booting or shutting down: "FreeBSD is now booting" "FreeBSD is ready to serve you" "I am completely operational and all my circuits are functioning perfectly" "I'm sorry Jordan I'm afraid I can't do that".. :) If you're going to work on something, do one of those four things, but don't worry about surpressing the hardware probe messages. -- Jake
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