Re: DragonFly RC1 ISO now available.

[Ivan Voras <ivoras@xxxxxx>]

Matthew Dillon wrote:

> :For what it's worth, I think it's a definitely must-have for the official 
> :1.0-release! It might not be complete, but it's sure A LOT better than the 
> :manual way for most people. (And, if you don't like it/it doesn't work for 
> :you, you can still do it manually by exiting the installer to the shell).
>
>     I think it's possible but we're trying for an official release in ~7 days,
>     so the timing would be pretty tight.  Personally speaking I don't think
>     it's necessasry to rush and stress to get something into the first
>     release.

It depends. Is DragonFlyBSD ready for 'production use'? Will people be 
encouraged to install it in their computers/servers (ok, maybe not 
mission-critical-do-or-die types, but small servers for starts, personal or 
semi-personal)? Then it should have an installer that can do that without 
much hustle, even if it can't bring up the network or such. Personally, even 
if I have some major usability suggestions for it, I think that, after the 
install-into-partition bug is fixed, the installer is ready for 1.0.

Although knowledgable users will probably not have difficulties installing 
from scratch (mostly because it's not really hard), it is certainly hairy 
and error-prone (and it's unfriendly to users that only want to see "whazzit 
about"), and the "wider audience" will be turned off. I think the project 
would make a better impression if it had any kind of installer, than if it 
had none.

Maybe, an arrangement could be made so that the installer is put on the CD 
(event if it's somewhat buggy), but not started on boot (with a nice message 
saying "yes, there's an installer, but it's not finished and use it on your 
own risk. type "xyzzy" if you want to start it.").