7.0 installation, and Xorg in particular

[Freminlins]

I used to find FreeBSD easy. What has happened? I have a couple of machines
I usually install new versions on, one is headless the other is a desktop
machine (which was a 100% reliable 5.4 installation). I boot the headless
machine using floppies, then install across the net. But something has
happened such that I now need five floppies, and I have to put the boot one
in at least twice. This wasn't the case previously. It now reminds me of an
OS/2 installation with its floppy shuffling.

Then for my desktop machine. sysinstall crashes if I try to install x.org.
So I do a pkg_add -r xorg. After about 70 packages I give up. I only used to
have about 65 packages in total on my old desktop, now I need more than 70
and I haven't even got x windows up yet. So I go off and have a look and
discover that x.org 7.x is modular - "
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/unix/bsd/archives/xorg-72-on-freebsd-13661". This
fellow is talking about 300 packages just for x.org! This is nuts. No two
ways about it. Whoever decided to do this needs their head (or heads)
examined. It used to be so simple. Now it's not. If x.org didn't work for
some reason I wouldn't want to track down which of hundreds of packages is
missing. Who would? Also, I noticed that python as well as perl was being
installed. Is not one scripting language enough for x.org? Why are two
needed?

I am really frustrated. I don't understand how installing X* this way is
supposed to be an improvement. What does it actually give me that I didn't
have before? Note my old system was reliable, as is my desktop at work (a
6.2 machine). I was so frustrated that I gave up installing 7 on my home
desktop and am now in Windows land. It just seems so pointless. It reminds
me of the nastiness of Gnome, which has bazillions of packages, and Gnome
needs nearly all of them so why make them separate?

I've done enough head banging tonight. Maybe Xfree86 is still available. I
haven't looked yet.


Frem.