Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 15:39:23 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: David Shafer <fromrochny@email.msn.com> Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: My FreeBSD Experience Message-ID: <19990603153923.27985@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <000501bead7d$34c38a60$565cfed0@default>; from David Shafer on Wed, Jun 02, 1999 at 11:54:40PM -0500 References: <000501bead7d$34c38a60$565cfed0@default>
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On Wed, Jun 02, 1999 at 11:54:40PM -0500, David Shafer wrote: > Well, I gave it "the old college try." Didn't work. Followed all the > instructions; downloaded the files in the /bin directory and copied them to > floppies (shouldn't think I'd have to buy a CD from Walnut Grove or anyone > else; FreeBSD is free, right? Or is it?). After partitioning my hard-drive > and so on I got a cryptic error as soon as I tried to load the OS from the > floppies. Message said something like "choose NO from the next panel." > There was no next panel and from that point on the option to install from > floppies (or anything else, for that matter) was never re-presented. After > a few more attempts I quit. Huge waste of time. > > When FreeBSD is "ready for prime time" I'll try it again. In the meantime, > I'll stick with Windows, warts and all. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, Mr. > Bill Gates may be "a grasping, covetous old sinner" but his OS does install. Hi, I'm one of the Documentation Project volunteers and your message appeared on our mailing list. You're likely to get all sorts of responses now, from the thousands of happy FreeBSD users who read these lists. A lot of very knoledgeable volunteers here spend hours each day helping people and writing and editing documentation, as well as maintaining FreeBSD itself. Naturally some of them will feel a little slighted by your conclusions when you didn't even ask for help. It is also natural for you to react the way you did, after having invested so much effort in an exciting project and finding that you couldn't reach the end point. These reactions, as intense as they may be at the time, usually pass fairly quickly. A bit of understanding on both sides helps a lot, and this can't happen until people communicate. You had a bad experience and were probably feeling too frustrated to ask for help, but someone will help you anyway if you decide you want to try again. Some of us here want to understand what went wrong, because you have given few details. Sure, it could be a bug, or something misleading in the documentation, some hardware that FreeBSD does not support, or the teensiest little imperfection in one of the huge stack of floppy disks you must have had to use. If you do want to explore this further, even just for your own curiosity, write to our support mailing list, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, giving as much information as possible. The people at freebsd-questions give excellent advice, for no charge, simply because they want to. (Hint: If you make them feel bad they won't be so keen, so it might be an idea to sleep on it first and write an email that really helps them to help you.) It will be easier if you glance at these first for ideas: http://www.welearn.com.au/freebsd/newbies/ http://www.freebsd.org/projects/newbies.html > P.S. I'm a professional programmer and I've worked on HP-UX and Solaris > systems so I really do have an inkling of what I'm doing. IMHP, FreeBSD > just doesn't cut it right now. Publish this if you dare. Eek, I wonder if you've ever installed those from floppy disks! I had to install a floppy disk version of MS-Office once, and I growled at everybody for days afterwards :-) -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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