Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 08:45:00 -0600 From: Dan Allen <danallen46@airwired.net> To: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Guido Falsi <mad@madpilot.net> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 7.1 Content Message-ID: <650D6892-6372-44A2-957F-B049E70DB881@airwired.net> In-Reply-To: <20080904062053.GA5953@icarus.home.lan> References: <35445338-D597-4FE2-996F-DEC7BE986741@airwired.net> <48BEEB55.4050406@madpilot.net> <E3C0561D-9BFA-46CD-B624-0CE49549AF2C@airwired.net> <20080904062053.GA5953@icarus.home.lan>
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On 4 Sep 2008, at 12:20 AM, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > I haven't finished reading the thread yet, but your assumption is > ignorant. Why do you think FreeBSD is intended solely for desktop > usage? It's not. > > I, for one, **only want a command prompt** out of the box. I **do > not** > want Xorg or any X-related garbage on my servers. Jeremy - read the whole thread first. My assumption is NOT ignorant. I know that most people want just a command prompt. I myself live in command prompt mode on FreeBSD most of the time as well. I completely agree with you that there are many times when I do not want X.org anywhere around. I get that many people consider FreeBSD a server OS. I often tell people about how Yahoo and other big sites run on it. You may be interested to know, however, that some people ALSO use it as a desktop system. ;-) This is not trying to force anyone to have Firefox or Xorg. This is about options in the FreeBSD installer that USED to allow the OPTION of having X setup for you. This is about OPTIONS to install the single most widely used kind of software (a web browser) on the system in a simple, straightforward way. In the Standard Install there should be an option that says "Install Firefox & Xorg". It should be an OPTIONAL CHECK BOX, not a mandatory one, but it should allow a desktop scenario to be setup easily. If the disks are near full, or need to be uniform across processors, or whatever, then I am okay with not having all of X and Firefox on disc1 IF there was a simple set of "pkg_add -r" commands that could hidden behind a script or dialog which could fetch the necessary software over the internet and set it up (along with .conf files so X starts up reasonably well) so that a non-command line user could have a good first time experience. It was using Ubuntu that caused me to realize how far behind FreeBSD is on the desktop side, and how, with a SMALL AMOUNT of work and changes, it could make a big jump forward by this proposed simple addition. Heck, if nothing else the installer could simply say in a help screen, "if you want a web browser on your system, type 'pkg_add - r firefox' on your system and edit blah blah .conf blah". As it stands right now, however, there is very little in the install process which helps a user get X up and going with a browser. Thanks to everyone else for their comments. Dan
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