Modern FreeBSD Installer?

[Michael David Crawford]

I got cursed up in heaps on the debian-user list, because I had the gall 
to assert that just installing a service shouldn't actually start it 
running.

I said that because I had done a full Gnome install on my PowerMac 8500. 
  What I didn't realize ahead of time was that it was going to install 
gdm, the Gnome Display Manager - Gnome's version of an X11 login prompt.

Unfortunately, the X server didn't recognize my video, so I was 
presented with a black screen and no way to get out of X11.

I don't remember exactly how I fixed that, but I do recall that the 
whole process was very painful and that I had to remove gdm.

Apple doesn't have a problem providing GUI installers for Macintoshes 
because they have the full specs on all the video cards, and lots of 
engineers and QA personnel.

But Open Source developers often have incomplete specs, and are 
chronically lacking in coders with the needed expertise.  They're often 
lacking in hardware to test with as well.

I can see all kinds of reason why a graphical installer would be nice - 
but it shouldn't be there at all unless you can count on it working 
reliably.  The appeal of a nice installer is probably not worth the 
effort it would require to achieve that reliability.

Just about every day I read on the FreeBSD-Current list about ZFS 
failing or even crashing the whole system.  There are many, many 
profound benefits a reliable ZFS implementation could bring to the 
community.  That would be a better use of the community's limited resources.

Mike
-- 
Michael David Crawford
mdc at prgmr.com

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