Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:59:31 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> Cc: Tim Judd <tajudd@gmail.com>, FreeBSD Questions Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Modern FreeBSD Installer? Message-ID: <20090426085931.0614c215.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <20090426001855.GA89151@owl.midgard.homeip.net> References: <BLU0-SMTP493F2C64E33D39A37EF75DD8740@phx.gbl> <ade45ae90904251645s350689fdj31164457172f6630@mail.gmail.com> <20090426001855.GA89151@owl.midgard.homeip.net>
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On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:18:55 +0200, Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> wrote: > As long as you have sufficient RAM (and you don't actually need all that > much of it) running X on an older CPU should not be much of a problem. > (Unless X.org has bloated really badly over the last couple of years.) It has. It makes my P4 2GHz 768MB RAM with ATI 9200 RV250 run slower than my 300MHz P2 256MB RAM, while not being able to init the screen at 1400x1050... :-( > That logic will often do the wrong thing for servers. They are the most > common case where people want to install using a serial console, but > typically do have a (fairly simple) graphical adapter and could run a > graphical installer perfectly well. That does not necessarily mean > that the person doing the install wants to do it. Exactly. The hardware configuration does not neccessarily imply the intentions of the user. > Better would be to check (somehow) for the presence of a keyboard and a > screen. If those are not present forget about X. If they are present > then the user at least has a possibility of using X. That would be a good approach. AT and USB keyboards need to be taken into mind. Another thing is the mouse. It *may* not be present, but the user may want to use the GUI installer. Then the GUI installer would need to have full keyboard support - a thing that you can rarely see today... > Also keep in mind that there are graphical adapters/screen combinations > where X will not work correctly without first tweaking configuration files. That's the problem of running X in this very limited stage of operations. It cannot do that much as if it was installed and had custom-tweaked config files. > Things have improved greatly here in recent years, but it is still > not perfect. And disimproved, too. :-) > I fail to see what the point of an X-based install would be - other than > pure eye-candy, which does not seem very important for something like an > installer which is used so rarely. A benefit that people often imply is that it attracts more users, because they get scared by the 80x25. Another point would be to select the LANGUAGE of the installer in the first place. Germans get scared by english words! :-) -- Polytropon >From Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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