Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 22:08:56 +0000 From: nsmart@indigo.ie (Niall Smart) To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: X based Free installation Message-ID: <199801082208.WAA01678@indigo.ie>
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On Jan 8, 6:54pm, Terry Lambert wrote: } Subject: Re: X based Free installation > > X is large. It wouldn't fit on single disk. CD ROM would work (have a > > fully installed X on CD with support for all different video adapters. > > But what about non-CDROM installs? FTP installs are very popular. > > You could always make them NFS installs instead of FTP, and have the > distribution sites allow anonymous NFS. Many of the big archives > allow anonymous NFS already. Actually, I was playing around with the idea of an X based install myself not so long ago, and I managed to squeeze an X server into a fairly small amount of space: -rw-r--r-- 1 nsmart nsmart 1964828 Jan 8 21:46 xmin.tar.bz2 This package includes the VGA16 server, xterm, some fonts and some libs, but no keyboard maps. BTW the executables are gzipped. This indicates we would need at most three disks and could probably get away with two. I don't think we really need more than 16 colors for the install, just some creative coloring. Is the download of an extra disk really that much hassle compared to the benefits of being able to provide first time UNIX users with an interface that they have grown used to? Installing *NIX is generally percieved to be a tricky thing, an X based install would go some way towards dispelling that myth. I finish college in June and will have some free time then, if -current isn't released by then I'm interested in persuing this idea. Niall
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