Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 12:08:33 +0100 From: Marc van Kempen <marc@bowtie.nl> To: "Sean J. Schluntz" <schluntz@pinpt.com> Cc: config@freebsd.org, imp@village.org Subject: Re: Commerical applications Message-ID: <199701291108.MAA02713@nietzsche.bowtie.nl> In-Reply-To: schluntz's message of Tue, 28 Jan 1997 09:16:53 -0500. <Chameleon.854472069.List@journeyman>
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[snip]
> > Aren't we talking about offering a nice sysinstall program for the
> > *not* so advanced users. Wouldn't it be so that people that want to
> > install FreeBSD on machines with obscure monochrome adapters or
> > serial consoles already know enough about installing/configuring
> > FreeBSD that they don't care about such a config utility.
> > They could propably do with a very much trimmed down version
> > of the install program that would just get the system installed.
>
> There are exceptions to everything. I was introduced to BSDLite (I think, BSD
> something.) v0.0 as an alternative to Minix some years ago when I took an
> intro course to Unix at my school (I wanted to be able to administer, and the
> Netcom shell account wouldn't let me ;(
>
> Not wanting to tie up my main system I threw together a 386 with some ram and
> a monochrome card and monitor (Because, Unix is text based right?). I think
> there will still be people doing that now. I have a friend who used to piece
> together computers for people who couldn't afford to get them, and he wanted
> to put a Unix on the ones that people wanted to learn on.
>
I'm not trying to say that there shouldn't be an install program for
people that want to use FreeBSD in text mode, just that the install
program in this particular case would not have to be so sophisticated
(and thus would take a lot of time to maintain and keep up to date).
My assumption here is that people that want to do this will be more
knowledgeable about Unix and computers than people that expect a GUI
install program.
If this assumption is true then we can drop the character interface
program and make the install program run in a 16 color Xserver with
a nice GUI interface.
Perhaps a summary would be nice...
What I have seen discussed in the past few weeks is the following:
(correct me if I'm wrong)
1 - Use a client server model a la Romeo and Juliet. This doesn't affect
the choice of userinterface but just provides a mechanism for
standardized communication about configuration options.
2 - Use HTML-browsers as the client userinterface, disadvantage seems to
be that there is no interactivity on a page itself, but only by sending
a new page (unless one uses java(script), but this is only possible
by using netscape as a client and this would require a running
Xserver).
Advantage of this approach is that you can also configure (administer)
your FreeBSD machine from any station in your network that has a
browser.
3 - Use non-existing CUI objects to do the job on the textscreens and
tcl/tk for graphical screens.
Option 2 can only be used if we can accept the disadvantage of
direct interactivity (for the time being, I'm sure technology
will catch up with us). We could even provide both, put
javascript in the pages to do input checking and such, then
if someone uses Netscape they will have interative pages. If
they use another browser they won't notice it.
Option 3 can only be used if either someone writes the CUI components
that are required, or if the above mentioned assumption is true (more
or less). Judging by the progress in that area I don't think that the
CUI components are going to get written any time soon, so it's either:
a) Use option 2 and provide interactivity with javascript as one
sees fit.
b) Use option 3, but drop CUI support and provide a minimal text
install program that uses libdialog.
Comments??
Marc.
----------------------------------------------------
Marc van Kempen BowTie Technology
Email: marc@bowtie.nl WWW & Databases
tel. +31 40 2 43 20 65
fax. +31 40 2 44 21 86 http://www.bowtie.nl
----------------------------------------------------
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