From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 8 09:30:10 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C24A616A4CF for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2004 09:30:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from dyer.circlesquared.com (host217-45-219-83.in-addr.btopenworld.com [217.45.219.83]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 146C943D31 for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2004 09:30:09 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from peter@circlesquared.com) Received: from circlesquared.com (localhost.petanna.net [127.0.0.1]) i28HW41J071699; Mon, 8 Mar 2004 17:32:16 GMT (envelope-from peter@circlesquared.com) Message-ID: <404CAE14.7010701@circlesquared.com> Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 17:32:04 +0000 From: Peter Risdon User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20031102 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Shaun T. Erickson" References: <404CA342.4040709@ste-land.com> In-Reply-To: <404CA342.4040709@ste-land.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: "W. D." cc: Barbish3@adelphia.net cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Installation - More user friendly X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 17:30:10 -0000 Shaun T. Erickson wrote: > JJB wrote: > >> WD >> My web spider robot found this web site which is not on any of the >> search engines yet. >> www.a1poweruser.com >> Looks like it offers what you want in the way of user-friendly >> step-by-step instructions to installing FBSD. > > > 1) Surreptitiously plugging your own site, is crass, at best. > 2) Not telling him you charge for everything there, is devious. Yet another 2c' worth... If anyone writes any documentation for FreeBSD, an operating system they got for free and learned about for free, partly through reading free documentation submitted by others, I'd personally admire their efforts more if it was submitted to the handbook. Luckily for us all, some people have taken this view already. The reason FreeBSD does not have graphical tools and wizards for the installation (or anything else, really) is that nobody who could has felt inclined to write the code for them. That's for some pretty obvious reasons. For example, no functional advantage would be gained from hundreds of hours of work. A bigger user base comprising more unskilled users would not work, even with smart graphical tools, without some kind of support infrastructure. Where's that going to come from? A lot of people are sick of wrestling with systems that have gui tools that either don't work properly or don't work at all (though this has improved in recent years), and don't let you beneath them so you can fix the problem directly. But there's nothing stopping anyone using the existing code and writing some snazzy tools, then selling it as a commercial distribution. It's almost worth typing that again for emphasis. A commercial distro would be the channel through which support infrastructures could be developed. The various Linux distros illustrate this. Red Hat, Mandrake and others charge money and provide graphical installs. Debian, probably the Linux distro closest to FreeBSD in orientation, does neither. Hardware compatibility aside, it's arguable that the answer to this is that if you want a graphical, simple to use version of FreeBSD, then buy Apple OS X. PWR.