Re: Trying to install current from a memory stick and then a DVD and got a new and strange installer.

On Jul 25, 2011, at 11:36 AM, Freddie Cash wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Bruce Cran <bruce_at_cran.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>> On 25/07/2011 06:01, Freddie Cash wrote:
>> 
>>> Thank goodness. The worst thing about sysinstall was that it tried to be a
>>> Swiss Army knife doing everything, yet not doing any one thing well. It made
>>> a royal mess of rc.conf if you tried to use it to configure a system.
>>> Usually the first time someone mentions they use it for post-install
>>> configuration, the recommendation is to stop doing that! An os installer
>>> should do just that: install the os and nothing else.
>>> 
>> 
>> I tend to disagree with this. For people unfamiliar with FreeBSD using it
>> as a systems administration tool can be really useful, at least until they
>> understand where all the various configuration files are and how they work.
>> Having recently switched to opensuse from Ubuntu I know I find the YaST
>> tool incredibly useful, and probably wouldn't have continued using SuSE if
>> it hadn't been there. Its installer mode is one of the better installers
>> I've come across, and lets you fine-tune the configuration.
>> 
> 
> The difference is that YaST was designed from the get-go to be both a system
> management tool and a software installation tool and a system installation
> tool.  Sysinstall was not, and sysinstall used as a post-install management
> tool the past couple of years has caused more issues for newbies than it's
> "solved".

Um, no.  Though sysinstall started life as a stop-gap until the "real" installer was written (which never happened), it quickly switched gears and strived to be both an installer and a configuration tool.  It was designed to do both, and there are volumes of emails from the last... what... 15-18 years?... that will attest to this.  The design flaw of sysinstall was that it didn't follow the model-view-controller design pattern, so over time it became harder and harder to maintain it, and it essentially rotted as the system evolved around it, despite many valiant efforts by many tireless developers.  YaST did a much better job of following the MVC pattern, and it shows 10 years later.

Scott