New work on installer?

[Viktor Lazlo]

On Tue, 18 May 2004, Robert Storey wrote:

> On Mon, 17 May 2004 01:00:37 -0500
> <timh at tjhawkins.com> wrote:
>
> > Has there been any new work on the installer or planned? If not, I would like
> > to help... What about graphical?
>
> If you're looking to improve FreeBSD's user-friendliness, more usefual than a
> GUI installer would be a few network setup tools. To get some idea what I'm
> talking about, take a look at Slackware's "netconfig" and "adsl-setup" tools.
> These aren't GUI, just ncurses scripts, but very easy to use. When I was a FBSD
> newbie, one of my most frustrating experiences was having to manually write and
> modify /etc/ppp/options and /etc/ppp/ppp.conf. I think a lot of newbies get to
> this point, spend a few frustrating days tearing their hair out, and then give
> up and go back to Redhat or SUSE.
>
> A user-friendly GUI or ncurses script for configuring the new PF firewall would
> no doubt win a few converts too. Take a look at Guarddog (a Linux tool for IP
> tables) to get some idea.

If you use sysinstall to configure the network it is very similar to
Slackware's netconfig, except that it is faster and easier since it is all
on once screen and will automatically probe for more information.  I've
never used dial-up under FreeBSD but there are ppp options in sysinstall
as well so presumably it will configure that as well for you.

Cheers,

Viktor