Re: RELEASE discs & ISO images (for future)

Hi Oliver Fromme! 

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:33:44 +0100 (CET); Oliver Fromme wrote about 'Re: RELEASE discs & ISO images (for future)':

>>>>> The xorg packages on disc1 occupy 54 MB.  Not really all
>>>>> that much, I think.  The linux base, perl and python occupy
>>>>> another 50 MB together.  The rest are small utility things
>>>>> and dependencies (only a few MB).
>>>> But that is still valuable if geom_ugz is in use.
>>> Have you actually tried it?  Providing hard numbers is
>>> more useful than just talking about it.  :-)
>> 
>> I've used Frenzy LiveCD many times (http://frenzy.org.ua), a
>> Portable SysAdmin Tool. It is 200Mb minicd with MANY useful
>> packages. It has X Window and many graphical and console
>> utilities (about 600MB uncompressed).  It proved to be stable
>> and not-so-slow.
> Nice.  Looks very interesting and useful.  Maybe there
> should be a link to it somewhere on freebsd.org.  :-)

> Would be interesting to know how it performs on rather
> slow and resource-limited machines, i.e. slow processor
> and low RAM.

Reasonably. I've ran Frenzy 0.3 on a Pentium 166, noticeable slow is only the
first run of each utility (otherwise it's cached).

> It's important to keep in mind that many novices who
> want to give FreeBSD a try will install it on an older
> spare machine.  So the installer and live FS should
> run well on older hardware.  It's for the advocacy
> reasons that you mentioned.  ;-)

Yes, I know :)

>>> Users who refuse to read docs will also refused to read
>>> docs that are directly available on the CD.
>>> Users unwilling to read docs cannot be cured by technical
>>> measures.  It's a user problem, not a FreeBSD problem.
>> 
>> When you say so, you lose a number of users.
> I'm not afraid of losing users who refuse to read docs.

You're splitting users to only two catefories - reading/not reading. In fact
there is third - "reading occasionally" :) And it's not good losing them too.

>> Yes, but DVD is still in the future.
> I don't quite understand.  Most PCs have a DVD drive.
> You can buy DVD-ROM drives for $20.

Not in all countries :-)

> Sure, there are old boxes that still have CD drives
> only.  I'm not saying that FreeBSD should stop making
> CD ISO images.  But it doesn't have to be the main
> focus anymore.  The majority of people do have DVD
> drives, so the focus should move to providing a DVD
> ISO image, getting rid of various problems (space
> constraints, CD shuffling annoyance).  "Legacy" CD ISO
> images could still be provided, but it's lower priority.

Sure, but not quite today.

>>> Such comparisons are bogus anyway.  I've installed SuSE
>>> linux before, and I think the graphical installer is
>>> terribly annoying.  It's worse than Windows.  It took
>>> me a lot longer to get a usable system installed, and
>>> even then it installed different sets than the ones I
>>> selected (I have no idea why).  In my opinion, FreeBSD's
>>> installation wins big time.
>> I've not said anything about graphics installer - but features/functional
>> only.
> Yes, my point was about features and functionality.
> I don't care if the installer runs in text mode or
> graphics mode, as long as it still supports text mode
> e.g. for installation via serial console, and as long
> as the design of the graphical installer does not
> interfere with usage.
> For example, when the animated files images that fly
> from the CD icon on the left to the harddisk icon on
> the right during installation take 75% CPU time on a
> slow machine, doubling the installation time, then
> something is clearly wrong.

Agreed, but that are _other_ features and functionality. Ability to read
all docs from installer != graphics and animation.

>>>> Imagine a review like this:
>>>> "That SuSe or Debian are wonderful with great number of software instantly
>>>> available and with this FreeBSD I must wait for download and then compile?!
>>>> Such shit! Don't use it, if they can't do this, they can't do other usable
>>>> things!"
>>> Such a review is worthless and shouldn't be taken serious.
>>> I really don't worry about that.
>> 
>> You don't, but a number of users can be lost. Advocacy, again.
> You cannot do anything against clueless reviews.  There
> will always be reviews from people who don't get the facts
> right and draw wrong conclusions.  And from people who
> are opposed to FreeBSD in the first place.  ("So, lets see
> if the FreeBSD dumbheads did it any better this time, but
> I really doubt it.  Nothing beats Dubian Linux anyway.")

You forget about unopinionated users who can just have unsuccessful
experience. Have seen http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=121979 ? :)
I guess the problem he had was due too many small Xorg packages after Xorg 7.0
split. This could be prevented by just moving Xorg to disc2. Exactly the user
category I said - and it happens, unfortunatelly.

>>>> And what about at least shell and some other tools?
>>> A shell and a few tools (very few, admittedly) are included
>>> in the MFS image in the /boot directory.
>>> And there's also the shell opened on Alt-F4 once the
>>> installation has started.  For anything else there is
>>> the "fixit" live FS.
>> That's shells are almost useless because even "ls" don't work.
> echo *

Yes, _I_ know. But novice user can't yet know it. And still, where is
more useful "ls -l" ?..

-- 
WBR, Vadim Goncharov. ICQ#166852181       mailto:vadim_nuclight_at_mail.ru
[Moderator of RU.ANTI-ECOLOGY][FreeBSD][http://antigreen.org][LJ:/nuclight]