From owner-freebsd-current Sat Apr 18 13:32:51 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA23675 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Sat, 18 Apr 1998 13:32:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from korin.warman.org.pl (korin.nask.waw.pl [148.81.160.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA23667 for ; Sat, 18 Apr 1998 20:32:45 GMT (envelope-from abial@nask.pl) Received: from localhost (abial@localhost) by korin.warman.org.pl (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA11738 for ; Sat, 18 Apr 1998 22:35:47 +0200 (CEST) X-Authentication-Warning: korin.warman.org.pl: abial owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 22:35:46 +0200 (CEST) From: Andrzej Bialecki X-Sender: abial@korin.warman.org.pl To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: There was PicoBSD - let there be a Mini... Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi! I seem to have some crazy ideas from time to time... Here's one of them. I propose to add another type of installation combined with a special distribution set. The idea behind it is to let people who are completely new to FreeBSD just try the system without really installing it (which bears all the hassle of repartitioning etc.), and to have positive enough impression to install i then in normal way. I admit that this idea occured to me when I tried the JavaPC preview. :-) Here's what the setup would be like: * the whole installation (available in sysinstall :-) would place FreeBSD on an existing DOS partition. Installation program would create the file with filesystem on it (which will then be mounted on a vn(4) device). This will require (well, it depends) ca. 16-24MB of free space on a DOS partition. * then the special distribution set would be transferred to the vn-mounted file. This distribution would contain (among others): basic system utilities, pretty minimal XWindow with SVGA server and a nice window manager (qvwm?) with file manager (FreeBSD Explorer?); and of course Netscape/Mozilla browser with Java. * the most important requirement of this set would be that each element work as expected with almost no setup on user's part (except network/dialup setup, which can be done with user-friendly script). * the whole thing would be started from DOS (using fbsdboot.exe). This will probably require special C:\kernel with small MFS, containing init(8), mount, vnconfig etc.. which after booting would first mount the DOS partition, and then vnconfig the previously created file with OS on it, and mount it on /. Well, that's basically the whole idea. How do you like it? I'm willing to try it anyway, and even to write some of the glue code needed to incorporate it into sysinstall. Andrzej Bialecki --------------------+--------------------------------------------------------- abial@nask.pl | if(halt_per_mth > 0) { fetch("http://www.freebsd.org") } Research & Academic | "Be open-minded, but don't let your brains to fall out." Network in Poland | All of the above (and more) is just my personal opinion. --------------------+--------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message