Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 01:07:10 -0600 From: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@over-yonder.net> To: "f.johan.beisser" <jan@caustic.org> Cc: chip <chip@wiegand.org>, Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, David Schultz <dschultz@uclink.Berkeley.EDU>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Intaller (was "Re: ... RedHat ...") Message-ID: <20020124010710.C2760@over-yonder.net> In-Reply-To: <20020123224541.E32624-100000@localhost>; from jan@caustic.org on Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 10:52:14PM -0800 References: <20020124004312.A2760@over-yonder.net> <20020123224541.E32624-100000@localhost>
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On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 10:52:14PM -0800 I heard the voice of f.johan.beisser, and lo! it spake thus: > > i think most people doing that level of a fringe install are fairly > hardcore users, and they're willing to make those kinds of mistakes. the > rare newbie that will do a SLIP install will probably be digging up quite > a bit of documentation. after several years of working with, and on, > FreeBSD, i can't say i've once had to do a SLIP install, even on "low end" > hardware. Hm. I must be a fairly hardcore idiot then, because I always forget the first time :P In fact, it took me several iterations before I realized that was the source of the problems; I kept thinking that all the other 'things I tried' were wrong too, because they didn't work, when in fact it was just the first failed try continuing to haunt me. SLIP can be tricky at times, hitting it dead right the first time is less than presumable. Try laptops. We all have ISA NE2k's in our junkboxes; my 386/16 has a NE2k out of my junkbox in it. Most of us don't, however, have PCMCIA NIC's in our junkboxes, and FreeBSD's history with PCMCIA isn't quite stellar, so your chances of grabbing J. Random PCMCIA NIC and having it work haven't been that great. Heck, the NIC in my current laptop only works because I have a switch; it won't negotiate half-duplex, and because it uses the ed driver, there's no ifconfig option to lock it to a speed/duplex setting. If I had a hub, it would get about 6k/sec sporadically, and I'd be better off with SLIP. Is it common? Heck no. Is it a big glaring Problem From Hell in the cases where it crops up? Heck yes. That's pretty much the standard for sysinstall; not too shabby when it works, grandiose when it fails. > i don't find it to be "rough-around-the-edges," if anything, the FreeBSD > installer is quick, and relatively painless to handle. given a little > reading, and a bit of practice, even the novice user ends up warming up to > it. Well, in the simple cases (i.e., what most people do most of the time), when you don't make big mistakes, that's exactly how it is; and that's one reason why, warts and all, it's endured so long; it works just well enough that nobody can quite get up the gumption to start from scratch (which is necessary) to write a new one (for free), because "Somebody will do it Some Time Real Soon Now", but it's broken enough that we can all bitch about it constantly until that Real Soon Now time comes. :-) -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Unix Systems Administrator | fullermd@futuresouth.com Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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