From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Mar 6 13:26:47 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1F51D16A4CE for ; Sat, 6 Mar 2004 13:26:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from mta13.adelphia.net (mta13.mail.adelphia.net [68.168.78.44]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B5BB543D2D for ; Sat, 6 Mar 2004 13:26:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from Barbish3@adelphia.net) Received: from barbish ([67.20.101.119]) by mta13.adelphia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.06.05 201-253-122-130-105-20030824) with SMTP id <20040306211502.CYTF14794.mta13.adelphia.net@barbish>; Sat, 6 Mar 2004 16:15:02 -0500 From: "JJB" To: "Chuck McManis" , "Chuck Swiger" Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 16:15:01 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20040306102156.02cc9b70@66.125.189.29> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Importance: Normal cc: FreeBSD Mailing list Subject: RE: New Users Learning FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Barbish3@adelphia.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 06 Mar 2004 21:26:47 -0000 There will all ways to the party line drawn between the developers and the users. Developers want total freedom about how to install and config while the users wany automated no question asked install. If FBSD was an commercial product, the developers world would never be seen by the customers. There is no question that the sysinstall process is not new-be friendly. Heck it's not even user friendly to experienced users. FBSD all ready has an division point called the development code branch for the developers and the stable code branch for the user community. The stable branch can be considered akin to an commercial product release version. The problem is the development total freedom install method is not really appropriate to the technical knowledge level of the general user community and this division between communities has always gone in favor of the developers. This will never change as long as developers are in control for it's their nature to be blind to the needs of the users of the finished results of their labor. This is even evident in the tone and depth of the documentation of the man pages and the handbook. Every thing is geared to the documentation reference needs of the developer and technical knowledgeable user. There really is no provisions for the people new to FBSD. They are kind of just left on the sidelines and have to dig through a lot of old outdated public internet how-to's, man pages which are so cryptic they are next to useless, and the handbook which is written in an style that is very hard to comprehend, the poor new user has to learn by trial and error. We can all see that this situation is almost designed on purpose to make the new user pay their dues before they can join the FBSD developers club. All this does is inhibits the growth that FBSD could really experience. An good compromise which services the wants and needs of both communities would be to add an newbe user-friendly install process on stable branch only. A step-by-step instructional install guide that explains how the system is designed to be used would go a very long way to speeding up the learning process of the newbe and go an long way to removing the frustration that we see voiced all the time in this questions list. Just my general observation's and comments based on what I have seen and read in the list. -----Original Message----- From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Chuck McManis Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2004 1:40 PM To: Chuck Swiger Cc: FreeBSD Mailing list Subject: Re: New Users Learning FreeBSD At 06:00 AM 3/6/2004, Chuck Swiger wrote: >Chuck McManis wrote: >>To put it in perspective, the best way to start USING FreeBSD as opposed >>to acquiring it to develop with, is probably to by an Apple machine with >>OS-X installed. All the integration is handled for you. It pains me that >>there isn't an organization of Apple's caliber providing a complete >>FreeBSD workstation product that I could load on any machine with a >>simple install. > >Apple has some advantages when writing an OS to run on their own hardware; >FreeBSD needs to deal with a much wider variation of hardware than Apple >does in terms of both quality and complexity. Well until 5.x the FreeBSD problem was no more difficult than the one Microsoft dealt with :-) I agree that if you limit supported configs it makes install easier. >I use both MacOS X and FreeBSD on a daily basis; they aren't the same OS >nor do they make although knowledge of one is often useful on the >other. OS X auto-defaults to installing everything into a single HFS+ >partition, which is ideal only in the sense that such an installation >avoids having the user make a decision about drive partitioning. That is a good example of a "user centric choice." Most application users (non-developers) derive little benefit from having multiple file systems. >That being said, my point is not to disagree with you so much as to say >that if you think the FreeBSD install should behave differently, you've >got the sources: make a few changes to streamline the process and see >whether other people like them. And my point was that the primary population of people who would have an opinion would be developers who violently disagree that there should be an "easy" or "dumbed down" install process. Did I mention that I also was the manager (acting) for the group that owned "Sun Install" at Sun 15 years ago ? (God that makes me feel old :-) The current install program has many external similarities to that one. I've heard all of the arguments, no one at Sun would tolerate an "EZ" installer and I doubt hardly anyone here would as well. Part of the problem is that interaction between installation and the need to have the developers provide hooks for it. The package system is quite good and frankly I think passes muster for both newbie/app user/ and developer alike. The XFree86 configuration/install is pretty horrific if you don't know much about computers (asking for the chip used in the video card? please!) My observation is that this is the sort of battle/change that cannot be manifested in an open source community. If you're familiar with the Cathedral and the Bazaar paper, its impossible to get everyone in the Bazaar to be quiet so that one person might speak to everyone at once. Conversely its impossible in the open source model to have one requirement impart requirements on everyone else. It just isn't in the nature of the community to accept such a constraint, and in parts of the community the hint of something like that generates huge antibodies. --Chuck _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"