Re: Notes on improving the installer

oh i have made many local changes myself to make ro rootfs not moan about everything it can't write down

i also made util shell script for installer live system i can run to get network up, quick diagnose cpu and battery (if machine has one), and to avoid getting your time wrong (rebooting from installer gets your cmos clock to ufc as there's no adjkerntz -i), mount tmpfs+unionfs over things so you can install pkgs into ramdisk, etc

i can share all of them as reference for future ideas



On November 10, 2025 2:35:45 AM GMT+02:00, Tomek CEDRO <tomek@cedro.info> wrote:
>I have added idea for "Migrate to FreeBSD" to the wiki :-) As people
>with decent computers cannot upgrade to Win11 there is a very strong
>push in looking for alternatives. For sure Linux is the first choice
>but it may be leveraged to migrate to FreeBSD and bring new crowd of
>users :-)
>
>https://wiki.freebsd.org/ImproveInstaller
>
>=== Migrate to FreeBSD ===
>
> * Because of Win11 not running on decent but older machines people
>look for alternatives. This can be leveraged to bring whole new crowd
>of users to the FreeBSD community desktop (LDWG).
> * Minimal installer path for non computer users with all complex
>setup questions hidden by default but possible to select when needed.
> * Resize existing partitions so that FreeBSD can be installed on the same disk.
> * Copy existing user data from old system partitions (i.e. user
>downloads documents music videos, maybe other places to select, maybe
>some backups of application settings, etc).
> * Ask if dual boot is desired to keep old system "just in case" or
>remove old system and resize FreeBSD partitions to fill in the free
>space. If old system is kept then provide easy way to remove it after
>some time when user is ready.
> * Provide set of packages to install (i.e. KDE, LXQT, XFCE, desktop
>environments, productivity packages such as LibreOffice, Firefox,
>Chromium, VLC, OBS, education, science, math, music, etc). From my
>experience non computer people feel best in KDE.
>
>