Sorry.

[Johnson David]

On Wednesday 17 September 2003 10:40 am, Vulpes Velox wrote:

> If any one else is interested in this, I would really be interested
> in getting together to discuss it and seeing what can be done about
> it.
>
> I personally would love to work on creating a desktop version of
> FreeBSD which uses a bit of scripting to install some default
> packages or whatever...

I've been thinking on this for several years now. I've come to the 
conclusion that only a few things are needed. One is a new installer. I 
love text mode installers, but I hear that some ex-Linux people get all 
freaked out when they don't see a GUI. But beyond the GUI, the current 
installer has some definite workflow problems and sharp edges. For a 
while I thought the libh project would be taking care of this, but I 
think it's time to admit that it's finally dead.

Another thing that needs doing is splitting apart the installer and the 
main configuration tool. But the installer should still use the config 
tool, so you don't have to learn two ways of doing things.

A good auditing of the ports to make sure they set sensible defaults on 
installation would be useful. It's a pain in the butt having to 
reconfigure a new program to use /dev/acd0 instead of /dev/dvd or 
/dev/cdrom. That's just one example. This is something anyone can do 
anytime. It doesn't take a lot of programming experience, only some 
knowledge of the ports system and lots of communication with various 
port maintainers.

Once you get KDE, Gnome or a good window manager installed and correctly 
configured, the FreeBSD desktop is all set to go. As long as one 
doesn't have to admin the underlying system, even my mom can handle 
KDE. OSX isn't easy to use because it has a slick look with lots of 
eyecandy, it's easy to use because they got the installation, 
configuration and administation all figured out.

I am more than willing to help out in any of the above areas, or other 
related projects. I have experience in Qt/KDE, ports and shell 
scripting. And I've always wanted to learn Ruby. I am confident that 
FreeBSD can show the Linux world that you can have an easy to use 
system without dumbing it down to the lowest common denominator.

David