Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:42:34 +0100 From: Tom Evans <tevans.uk@googlemail.com> To: Michel Talon <talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysinstall is still inadequate after all of these years Message-ID: <1215088954.35536.38.camel@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20080703093306.GA14469@lpthe.jussieu.fr> References: <20080703093306.GA14469@lpthe.jussieu.fr>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--=-O4kKBIkGCy0fxG8N2ICb Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 11:33 +0200, Michel Talon wrote: > Antoine BRUNEL wrote: >=20 > > In conclusion, I can agree you in that the "sysinstall" soft is a bit=20 > > out-dated, but it respond on a need of a BSD philosophy: just installin= g=20 > > a working operating system. All the later tasks have to be done by=20 > > "hands". But that's exactly what I wanted when I replaced Windows /=20 > > Debian to FreeBSD: having a full control on my system. > >=20 > > So, just another useless contribution..... >=20 >=20 > Useless ... for you. Conversely, for me it is your drivel which is > useless, and much worse harmful. The "full control" you are advocating=20 > is totally useless for almost everybody.=20 I disagree. Having never used FreeBSD, or any other BSD, I could install simply and quickly using sysinstall and the FreeBSD users handbook. Think it took about 1 hr total from install to gnome. Everything else I've wanted to do so far, and everything I'm planning to do (gmirror'd base, zfs for storage) has good documentation.=20 > On the other hand, while > even well known FreeBSD developers concede that there are problems in > the present installation (*) and packaging tools, and it is clear that > these problems are harming FreeBSD adoption, there is a group of users, > whose relative importance i don't know, but who are very vocal, and > whose aim is to preserve the statu quo. What is lacking for FreeBSD is > some sort of Ubuntu, which has built a great success on the solid basis > of Debian, but working around the conservatism of the Debian > nomenklatura. Maybe pcbsd will do the same, but is is not obvious at > present. That might be great, but I'd really prefer that the current system of introducing well documented new features continues, rather than expend a lot of effort producing tools that people who won't/don't read documentation can use to administer their system without having a clue what they are doing.=20 =46rom the base of FreeBSD, I want commands like atacontrol, with excellent documentation. I don't want FreeNAS, or something like Windows Disk Management.=20 > (*) even the author of said tools wrote from the beginning that these > tools were quick hacks, not really adequate. The situation is much worse > now, since the installation tool knows nothing about modern FreeBSD > features, such as geom mirror, etc. , while the packaging tools, which > worked OK with 5000 ports, show their limits with 18000 ports. Ports WFM. When I need a new port, I go install it. When I want to upgrade ports, I cvs up, and portupgrade. Every now and then I do a pkg_cutleaves to make sure only ports I still need are installed. I will probably get accused of an elitist attitude, but if one doesn't want to read and learn from lots of documentation, FreeBSD probably isn't the right choice. Personally, there's nothing that would make me want to use Linux/Windows (and unless a great deal has changed over the past 3 years, I doubt Linux is actually that user friendly. It probably doesn't confuse as much, due to the fancy idiot tools.) Tom --=-O4kKBIkGCy0fxG8N2ICb Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (FreeBSD) iEYEABECAAYFAkhsyTcACgkQlcRvFfyds/eInwCcD9vJGKvSNpZF38BgKBi0KCSG tW8AnR9h6Mtfyh5dlaWD8fTkAmoShYYD =oQIf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-O4kKBIkGCy0fxG8N2ICb--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?1215088954.35536.38.camel>