Installer

[W. D.]

At 15:14 10/12/2004, Newton wrote:
>Dear Friends : I'm a Linux user since 1,999 and I'm really interested in 
>start FreeBSD. OK, it's a new system, different versions and so on. My 
>experience with computers started with Basic, after MS-DOS, Windows and 
>Linux. When I tried Linux, 5 years-ago, partitions, kde, window maker  
>and many of them, were only words. My first fear, was erase my HD. I did 
>it many times, but I knew how to start again or recover. I'm writing 
>these things, cause in these years using Linux, I saw a big evolution , 
>specially the installer. Mandrake, Red Hat, Fedora, Slackware and 
>another, made a goob job and you can do it , almost without problems. 
>But, when I tried FreeBSD installer, I remembered Debian, the worst 
>installer ! Probably another distributions, like Knoppix, Kurumin , 
>Gnoppix to name a few, trying to make the life user easiest ! My first 
>experience with FreeBSD, was 5.0, with a PC Master, brazilian magazine. 
>After many tries, a XFree86 error, when I typed startx, disappointed me 
>again and, I forgot it... On the last month, I downloaded the 2 CDs, 
>5.2.1, and, the same installer, errors, infinite loops... very 
>disappointing ! I tried many lists, and with some support,to resolve or 
>not, the problems. Again, I format my system and, here I am, with 
>Windows (mainly for games and a problematic usb scanner) and Linux. I 
>need a more stable system. Many people talked me very good about 
>FreeBSD. For me, until now , the biggest deception ! Please, I don't 
>know the FreeBSD objectives, but if you would like that more and more 
>people can use it, CHANGE this installer. Confuse , in one word ! 
>Disappointing ! I tried standard, express, custom , all packages, 
>minimum, all kind of ways... I can't understand a looped install. Almost 
>2 hours after, an error... My video card is recognized , but when you 
>did post-install, not ! You tried many XFrre86 configs and not.... When 
>something happens and finally you can start KDE or GNOME or another, 
>DHCP don't run and so on. Please change this installer and trying to 
>better hardware and network configuration ! Until this, I'll never tried 
>FreeBSD again ! Sincerely, Newton - Curitiba - Brazil

Hi Newton,

Definitely the installer (sysinstall) needs to made more
user friendly.  Since FreeBSD is a volunteer project, anyone
can work on a new 'user-friendly' version.  How 'bout you?  ;^)

I had trouble at first installing FreeBSD, but once I put
together a procedure list for myself, it doesn't take much time
at all:
http://www.US-Webmasters.com/FreeBSD/Install/

I recommend you start from 'scratch' and install it on a 
blank hard drive.

Good luck!




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