FreeBSD for the common man(or woman) (was: upgrade 7.2 overwrites partitions)

[Jonathan McKeown]

On Thursday 06 August 2009 09:43:47 Mark Stapper wrote:
>
> In light of this, I would really enjoy seeing a "Ubuntu" like movement
> in the FreeBSD corner.
> What I mean is that it would be nice for my mother to install and use
> FreeBSD.
[snip]
> To achieve this, there are two things that should be made easier:
> 1. Installing a basic desktop system(next to any currently installed OS)
> 2. Keeping the base system and ports up to date.
> And when I mean "easier" I mean it should be done without bothering the
> user unless you about to "rm -rf /" as root, so to say.

This is what a couple of projects are already doing. PC-BSD springs to mind - 
I can't remember what the other one is called.

PC-BSD is FreeBSD, pre-packaged with a usable desktop and its own simplified 
package manager.

Jonathan