why BSDs got no love

[Julian H. Stacey]

Matthew Seaman wrote:
> ... an installer as
>  a
> CLI program that reads in a fairly simple fixed script or language to do 
> the
> installation work, and have separate Curses and/or X based programs to al
> low
> users to create the installation script interactively.  

I admit being seduced at times by graphical interfaces, but 
bland blue screens hide a lot of action & info CLI allows.

I was told blind people need CLI, cos Braille output devices do one
line of 40 chars, (& expensive; possibly mass production might lower
costs / inrease resolution, but Braille is different for different
languages, discouraging mass production ).


Peer Schaefer <peer.schaefer at hamburg.de> wrote:

> BTW, the Debian installer consists (a) of a modular, frontend agnostic
> backend, and (b) different frontend "plugins", e.g. a curses-frontend or
> a X/GTK+-frontend. This is a modular and very elegant approach (but
> surely difficult to implement).

Perhaps the way to go is a common table of target defaults eg
	/usr/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/install.cfg 
Which could then be edited by all of
	Front end CLI		(*)
	Front end curses GUI	(*)
		(*)		Maybe these 2 alternatives should be 
				the first question the installer asks ?
	Front end X11 GUI (for later after main install complete 
				- Shudder, Not that I'd use it, but someone 
				  would probably want to write one).
	vi - for editing, & writing back to new boot media,
		to auto install on multiple identical new machines.

All of 4.11, 7.1 & 8.0 man sysinstall contain:
	This product is currently at the end of its life cycle and
	will eventually be replaced.

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey: BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
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