Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 15:08:03 -0700 (PDT) From: backyard <backyard1454-bsd@yahoo.com> To: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com>, Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Newbie Experience Message-ID: <20060911220803.92966.qmail@web83101.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <9B73D1B3-5D50-4E56-A62B-70A3A07E6B34@mac.com>
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--- Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> wrote: > On Sep 11, 2006, at 12:15 PM, Jeff Rollin wrote: > > Discussions like these leave me lost for words... > > Perhaps, although it seems you recovered quickly. > :-) > > > Which is to say, apart from the occasional bug I > really don't see > > what the > > problem is with sysinstall. I'm in that club myself. It takes a few times to get it down, but it is simple once you know the basic steps of getting FreeBSD on a box. The trick is of course understanding the basic steps which is where most don't take the time to research. I know I read through tha handbook a few times before I attempted my first go, and I know I messed up royally even still. But now its more frustrating to figure out what I want to do while the packages are downloading then anything else. > > Credits: It's highly functional. It can configure a > lot of things > about a FreeBSD system, either during or after the > installation of > the system. It's CLI/remote-serial-console > friendly. > > Debits: It's oriented towards technical people. > People who don't > understand computers well in general, and the > details of disk layouts > in particular, tend to get hopelessly confused. Not > only do they > usually not know how to access the help inside > sysinstall, many times > the help text is not available, or is not > comprehensible unless you > have the already-mentioned technical background. I would have to concurr with this 100%. My first go at FreeBSD was a little rough do to this whole concept of two "partitionings." I thought to myself now why would anyone want to do this. I wouldn't consider myself at the time a novice, but I wouldn't consider myself too bright either... Now it makes perfect sense to have one partition and multiple slices. It makes an fstab look a lot nicer. nothing more annoying then not having say a linux box boot because you selected the extended partitions number instead of the logical drive contained therein... and keeping track of a million partitions get old quick. > > Fortunately, the outstanding docs available for > FreeBSD do a lot to > walk people through the process, even novices. > Unfortunately, people > want to use computers without having to read the > docs. Just ask your > mom/grandparents/etc. :-) > most people want to use everything without reading the manual. I think thats why there's labels on the toaster not to stick a fork in it, or a tag to not use a hair dryer in the shower... Personally I turn to the Cadillac shop manual when I want to tune up my eldo, it makes sense to me. I know software is the same way, but most people don't want to take any time figuring out what their doing; pardon my vulgarity but Taco Bell exists for a reason, man pages... > > To me it's the best thing this side of YaST for > > getting (certain areas of) system administration > done. (Yeah, I > > know a lot > > of you probably hate YaST in particular or Linux > in general... > > Why would you think that? I'd imagine that most of > the people using > FreeBSD end up having a Linux box or two around for > one reason or > another. I find it was for not reading the FreeBSD manuals... if people think FreeBSD is hard I cannot imagine what they think about Linux. Sure it has that flashy install program, well except Gentoo and maybe a few others, but upgrading the kernel can make setting up a FreeBSD box from scratch WITHOUT the manuals seem like a cake walk... I will admit to having a linux partition on my laptop, but only because I haven't taken the time to backup FreeBSD and give myself 15 more gigs... I will give Linux this, if I were building an embedded system I would probably go with Linux, but only because the obscure hardware sometimes in PC104s has vendor supported linux drivers. That and I understand how Linux boots better then FreeBSD, I'm hoping this will change soon; even have a Treo 650 lying around with X windows name all over it... might have to try OpenBSD for that one though... -brian
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