Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:08:47 +0100 From: Niek <niek@bigfoot.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why is sysinstall considered end-of-life? Message-ID: <45A628CF.5020504@bigfoot.com>
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On Tuesday 09 January 2007 08:21, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > > > > 3) The largest complaint about sysinstall is that it's not graphical. The > > problem is that a graphical installation program has some -severe- > > constraints on it. First, it has to work in ALL instances. That means, > > 640x480x16 colors VGA screen. You have a lot of people out there > > installing on systems that have, for example, monitors with inadequate > > horizontal/vertical frequency ranges and very capabable video cards, > > unless you force the X-server to use the original VGA resolution, it's > > going to overdrive those monitors and the user is going to see a black > > screen when the installation program comes up. And the only way FreeBSD > > is going to get a graphical anything is by using Xorg, and FreeBSD does > > not maintain that distribution - so we are now dependent on the Xorg > > group writing their code with no bugs for our installation program to work. > > While I admit that sysinstall could be polished at the rough edges, I vote for a non-graphical installer for server aimed installations. I see no practical reason to have an X based installer for a server installation at all, with all the heavy stuff that's necessary for it. Please leave that to the desktop oriented BSD distributions. I wonder how many server admins would like to see an X based installer. I rather would propose a clear distinction (communicated to new users) between desktop aimed distributions and server based ones, where the first category would be the current distribution of FreeBSD, with a nice graphical installer, a window manager, drivers for most sound, usb, wireless and video devices, and desktop applications added to it. I am not familiar with desktopBSD and Freesbie, but I can imagine that these are already working in that direction. (I am using FreeBSD-current as a desktop OS on a laptop, but it required some days of tweaking to get sound, touchpad & usb mouse, 1280x800 resolution and wireless networking running.) Niek
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