BSD Question's.

[Malcolm Kay]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2005 01:03 am, Danial Thom wrote:
> --- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at ceid.upatras.gr>
>
> wrote:
> > On 2005-12-24 14:01, Danial Thom
> >
> > <danial_thom at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Don Hinton <don.hinton at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> > > > For me, FreeBSD is about twice as fast/easy
> >
> > to install/configure,
> >
> > > > and infinitely cheaper.
> > >
> > > Considering that WinXP usually comes on the
> >
> > computer, I don't see how
> >
> > > "installing and configuring FreeBSD" can be
> >
> > easier than having to do
> >
> > > nothing at all?
> >
> > Windows XP comes preinstalled, yes.  Not
> > "preconfigured" too.  It so
> > happens that configuring a Windows XP system to
> > match one's preferences
> > has the potential to:
> >
> >     a) Screw the machine up so completely and
> > utterly that a reinstall
> >        is required.
> >     b) Take a lot of time.  A huge lot of time,
> > because of all the
> >        different 'driver' installation
> > processes.

I have installed numerous sytems including various versions
of MS-DOS and Windows, OS/2, OS/9, Linux distributions and 
large range of FreeBSD releases. There have been some 
difficulties from time to time but with one exception these
all yielded to study+reason. The one exception was an XP
diagnostic build on which I eventually admitted defeat.
 
>
> Ate you claiming that someone not familiar with
> how to configure FreeBSD can't screw it up beyond
> usefulness? I can point you at about 10% of my
> customers who've spent weeks just trying to
> compile a kernel and get basic networking
> working, much less a desktop with X.
>

I would claim that XP is quite capable of screwing up 
its system without any real help from the user.
I installed a HP all-in-one scanner-plotter on my 
a NEC laptop running XP professional and this worked 
fairly well until HP suggested I should update the 
software. Thereafter some minor annoyances/bugs appeared.

I decided that I should go back to the original so I 
activated the system unistall utility on the HP software.
After partly removing the software the utility reported 
errors; that it could not complete the uninstall.

Nor would the original installation rerun because it thought
it was already there. 

So now I don't have access to the all-in-one. Removing
all the directories on the machine identified as from HP
and registry entries in identified as HP allowed some 
reintallation to proceed but it is incomplete and doesn't
run.

I have never experienced this sort of lockout on a FreeBSD 
system.

It is looking as though I will need to do a completely new
XP installation -- which I am not looking forward to.

It has been said before Windows is OK until something goes 
wrong; but then it is mostly unfixable.

Malcolm Kay