Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 16:42:41 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: FreeBSD-Newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: What do newbies want? Message-ID: <199804142342.QAA00806@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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>Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 07:21:44 +1000 >From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> >What would make things easier and more pleasant for people who try FreeBSD >for the first time? Is there something you wished for when you started but >couldn't find? What did you find that you really liked? Are there problems >that only newbies have, that could be addressed somehow? If you had a magic >wand, what would you like to see added, removed, or improved? Fewer forced references to bizarre PC hardware and M$ "software". Rather, use of more usual UNIX terminology. I'm still quite unclear about how "slices" work; I was unable to build a FreeBSD system except by setting up the disks in dedicated mode. Basically, I don't have time in my life to learn M$ stuff just so I can understand how to make, use, and administer FreeBSD systems. For that matter, "gratuitous change" reduction would be useful -- I'm forever checking things on other kinds of systems, then trying to do a tail -f /var/adm/messages -- which sn't very useful on a FreeBSD box. (Yeah, I could make a symlink, but I administer a bunch of the boxes. I suppose I could hack up an amd map, but that would be cruel & unusual.) Although I am beginning to unnderstand that the "ports" concept may be useful for some folks, I'm still rather uncomfortable with it, since I want o have a single source repository for site-installed software, and I'm accustomed to doing the various configuration & make things that need to be done anyway. It isn't clear that the "ports" approach is all that useful if FreeBSD isn't the only UNIX flavor around.... As a consequence, it rarely even occurs to me to see if a "port" exists -- I fire up ncftp & go to the site where something is, get it, unpackit, & do the usual stuff.... Of course, some of my eccentricities are becoming more widely known, david -- David Wolfskill dhw@whistle.com (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 401-0168 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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