Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:28:55 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> Cc: Tim Judd <tajudd@gmail.com>, FreeBSD Questions Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Modern FreeBSD Installer? Message-ID: <87zle3mii0.fsf@kobe.laptop> In-Reply-To: <20090426001855.GA89151@owl.midgard.homeip.net> (Erik Trulsson's message of "Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:18:55 %2B0200") References: <BLU0-SMTP493F2C64E33D39A37EF75DD8740@phx.gbl> <ade45ae90904251645s350689fdj31164457172f6630@mail.gmail.com> <20090426001855.GA89151@owl.midgard.homeip.net>
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On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:18:55 +0200, Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> wrote: > Better would be to check (somehow) for the presence of a keyboard and > a screen. If those are not present forget about X. If they are > present then the user at least has a possibility of using X. Deferring to the user all the decisions that are impossible to make with a reasonable chance of doing the Right Thing for everyone seems ok too. Solaris has been shipping for quite some time with an installer that can run on serial consoles, an installer that can launch a simple terminal-based session under X11, and an installer that can launch a Java GUI version in all its bloated glory. The decision of which installer to launch is left to the user who sits on the boot console, who is presented with a simple menu like: +-------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Please select installation type (default = 3): _ | | | | 1. Text-only console installation. | | | | 2. Terminal based GUI installation. | | | | 3. Dialog driven GUI installation. | | | +-------------------------------------------------------+ There is also a timeout that launches the user-friendly GUI dialogs after a few seconds. I think this is a reasonable approach to the problem of which installation mode to launch. The default is `user friendly', there is a timeout so the installer won't get stuck forever in the prompt, and there is still an option for a plain console-based installation for everyone who wants to go that way.
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