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

Eric Kjeldergaard wrote:
>>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).

I've spent the past two weeks installing every open-source OS I could 
get my hands on into VPC2004 and VMWare virtual machines.  There are a 
few out there which do provide graphical, or pseudo-graphical, 
installations.

Solaris had an X-based install but I suspect Solaris has a much narrower 
range of hardware it needs to support.

Plan9 managed to do some very lightweight installation (that fit on a 
*floppy*) and was still graphical.  I liked their install very much -- 
it was no-frills console windows, but it provided mouse support and a 
couple of "informative" extra windows.  But this brings up exactly the 
problem with GUI installers -- the plan9 install didn't support the 
"graphics adapter" that Virtual PC emulates, and so it just didn't work. 
   For a nice OS like plan9, this isn't a big deal.  For an OS like 
FreeBSD I don't think that would be acceptable.

Overall, I installed 10 different OS's, and FreeBSD was probably my 
second favorite (I did like DFly, as mentioned before).  It's 
straightforward, it guides you through the process fairly well, it does 
most of the grunt work, it's flexible, it loads and responds fast, and 
it's got a lot of on-screen assistance.  I picked it up and used it, 
with no documentation, the very first time I installed FBSD anywhere. 
(Contract to Gentoo, a geek-favorite, which I had to keep their 
installation handbook open in a browser the entire time).  My only real 
complaint (not minior nit-picks like about the auto-labelling etc) is 
that it's too easy to move around inside the installation and go the 
wrong place.  I routinely find myself trying to change a simple setting 
post-install, and somehow triggering the entire extraction process 
again.  DFly's installer is more wizard-like, in that you can't really 
do things out of order.  Otherwise, I would like to see the install stay 
similar to what it is.

--Mike