Re: My project wish-list for the next 12 months

> Agreed.  But I don't think performance is the issue with X.  As I see
> it, there are several major problems with building an X installer:
> 1) It quite common in the server arena for machines not to have any
>    graphics head and X is incompatible with serial terminals.
> 2) You need to configure the X server to support your video adapter,
>    mouse, keyboard and screen.  Remember, the "standard" basic VGA
>    interface doesn't necessarily exist outside the PC world.  There
>    are enough problems with keyboards (see one of Scott's other wishes)
>    without wanting to add mice, screens and video adapters.
> 3) /stand is ~2.7M on i386.  A minimal X environment is going to be
>    50-70MB.  This means 50-70MB less packages on CD1.
> 4) X is a RAM hog by sysinstall standards.  The minimum RAM requirements
>    will go up significantly.  Whilst this shouldn't worry current
>    generation hardware, it will make installing FreeBSD on older hardware
>    (486 and P1) very difficult.

I want to preface by saying that I certainly don't think a GUI
installer should replace what FreeBSD ships with now.  Having said
that:  It has been suggested in the past, and may as well be suggested
again now, that a liveCD installer be created.  I know that amongst
desktop/first-time users this would be a welcome addition.  I also
realise that it isn't FreeBSD's main market (though it is a major
consideration).  This sort of project could be done with somewhat less
knowledge (I think) than sysinstall itself, and would have many
classes of systems that simply by nature of being a liveCD it wouldn't
have to worry about (I think of headless servers and 486s).  Just
thought I would toss the idea out to see what people thought of it at
this point (as I've not heard much about it for a while, and it seems
that many of them were getting ready for 5-STABLE).
-- 
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