Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 09:22:26 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, Eric Wayte <ewayte@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu>, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral Message-ID: <3B4B2BC2.2E625A32@mindspring.com> References: <000701c10452$ca818600$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <3B4560DD.428634F8@softweyr.com> <20010706092541.C23117@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> <3B49E58D.5EDDDA2A@mindspring.com> <20010709231626.B16152@clan.nothing-going-on.org>
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Nik Clayton wrote: > It's reasonable to want to control what get's called FreeBSD. I never said it wasn't; I would just like to draw the line on the far side of sysinstall being what shows up first thing when you boot from a CDROM. > The intent here is not to prevent third party installers -- > they can be open source, closed source, or whatever mix you > want. If you want to produce a commercial distribution of > FreeBSD that does not use sysinstall as the default > installation mechanism then go right ahead, make it the > default, have it come up automatically when your customers > boot from CD, and so on. > > However, if you want to call it FreeBSD, then, somewhere, > sysinstall (and whatever replaces it) must be available. > Put it on "boot-legacy.flp" if you want, and strongly urge > your customers not to use it. But make it available to > those that want it. This is amazingly more reasonable than previous posts, which have all suggested that it must be possible to boot the CDROM to sysinstall. Effectively, doing so would require that sysinstall take the front seat, and that you put another text menu entry on it to pick your installer. > Then I can make sure that the Handbook chapter on installation says, > right at the beginning: I also understand the documentation issue. Look, I've been programming professionally for ~22 years now, and I didn't just step off the turnup truck: you'll find my code in BSD all the way back to when I wrote the FAQ and patchkit for 386BSD 0.1. I know what professional software developement, and consistency in presentation to the user means for a product. ...Please look at it from the perspective of someone willing to work on improving the initial impression that FreeBSD leaves in a user's mind: FreeBSD is behind in the game from the start, since PCs come installed with Windows, and without a seperate partition that can be easily and immediately usable by a third party OS. It drops further behind because of the difficulty of transferring experience over to using the FreeBSD tools from people who have been trained up in the Windows style guide. I think that any attempt to make the initial experience less painful will require a lot of work, and the ability to license "Partittion Magic" or a similar tool, right out of the box, and have it be the first thing people see (or, preferrably, have it be one of the things that people see, as seamlessly integrated into the overall look and feel of the installation process as possible). The "Partition Magic for FreeBSD" isn't going to happen without $$$ being involved, I think. Walnut Creek sold a FreeBSD package that included one that ran under Windows. But the barrier to entry is still too high to be able to capture a reasonable mindshare. I _personally_ do not want to build such a distribution; I think it would open up whoever did that to extreme friction with the FreeBSD project: Hell, even the mere act of contemplating such a thing has practically set off a firestorm. No Thanks! I'll work on the periphery problems, hopefully enabling someone else to do the deed. Frankly, I don't see much of this work happening, unless there is at worst nose-thumbing ande grudging cooperation from the project. As Jordan says: Walnut Creek CDROM is dead; someone has to take up the mantle -- but not me... not today. There are too many people looking for a back to stick arrows into, and I'm happy to let the indians focus their scalping on Wind River Systems for now. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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