Re: BootBlocks.

[Andreas Hauser <andy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

talon wrote @ Sat, 03 Jun 2006 19:06:48 +0200:
> Andreas Hauser wrote:

> > The thing is once you installed BSD and learned its ways it
> > gets easy. While on the otherhand the more "userfriendly" Linux
> 
> We are explicitely speaking of newcomers here, not of people who
> have taken pains of reading a several hundred pages "handbook",
> or have previously used FreeBSD or NetBSD for several years.

Well there are books for Kids and books for parents and books
for scientists. Noone requires people to start with the science
books.

But really DragonFly is not as hard as this analogy might make it seem.
The decision is for or against using UNIX. If you want UNIX you got
to learn the command line[1]. If you insist on Windows/MacOS9 ways
you will burn yourself. What i don't get is why people insist.

[1]
Kernighan and Pike, "The UNIX Programming Environment"
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/upe/
Read it and it becomes easy.

> > distros with those "marvelous" tools make it seem like an endless
> > learning curve. And that's not even considering the constant evolution
> > of the Linux kernel itself (which still supports 3 generations of
> > packetfiltering).
> 
> As if FreeBSD did not support 3 completely different packet filters
> ipfw, ipfilter and pf.

And that was raised as a problem in this thread.
This should just show that the proposed role model you want us to go
for also has 3 (much more similar).

> > And don't forget the BSD besides Desktop BSD don't state as goal
> > to conquer the Desktop of peoples grandmothers.
> > And especially DragonFly aims at Cluster and performance.
> 
> I understand that. I am also extremely sceptic on the interest of
> the cluster stuff, but let us say i am uninformed. Knowing a certain number
> of so-called "computer professionals" i am quite convinced they dont want
> to read hundred pages more than your proverbial grandmother. Which means
> that if such reading is required they will fly away at high speed towards
> greener pastures. You can multiply this by an order of magnitude if
> documentation is not even existent.

So they have to read thousands of pages of non-existing documentation?
Think you have a logic problem there ;)

$ wc -l /usr/src/nrelease/root/README
332 /usr/src/nrelease/root/README

If they can't read 332 lines they are out of game.
Who cares?

Have you tried the way of the README or did you just assume it to be hard?

> > What i really don't though is that installation is a problem.
> > The README is doing a great job. And the BSDinstaller is superb.
> > 
> 
> Your opinion. Let us ask 100 average people how do they rate
> the Ubuntu installer and the BSDinstaller, and come back after. From
> my own judgement it is slightly better than freebsd sysinstall on some
> points and worse on others, and light years behind most decent
> Linux installers (Mandrake, Fedora, etc.).

Which is really the right thing for them todo. Why waste their time
making them use a Cluster/Server(/Workstation) OS just to run a
Webbrowser?

-- 
Andy