FreeBSD 7.1 Content

[Dan Allen]

On 3 Sep 2008, at 5:54 PM, Brian wrote:

> I always do the minimal install over the net.  I got X working in 7- 
> stable by doing the minimal install, then the following.
>
> pkg_add -r xorg
> pkg_add -r portupgrade
> portupgrade -NRP kde
> pkg_add -r tightvnc.

On 3 Sep 2008, at 5:59 PM, Randy Pratt wrote:

> The ports/packages are actually not part of FreeBSD but are third- 
> party
> applications.  I've often thought that the packages on the  
> installation
> disks should really be split to a separate project which produces
> package disks.  This would lessen the burden on the Release Engineers
> and perhaps the cycle time between releases.  It should also be
> noted that the useful life of a package is limited and outdated very
> quickly.

Hey, these great comments bring up a different solution, which may be  
the way to go.

It is simple: have a few of the common apps that are net-centric (like  
firefox) be simply calls to pkg_add -r in the installer.  No ports  
databases, no packages on the discs.  A few packages may be useful  
(like perl) to someone without net access, but many need the net to be  
useful.

I often forget about pkg_add -r because I build everything from source  
myself, but just a prompted dialog offering a few of the most common  
and popular apps like:

* kde or gnome
* firefox or xxx_browser
* vnc
* openoffice

via pkg_add -r might be a very simple solution (no disk impact to  
speak of) and perhaps could even be determined by a look at which pkgs  
are installed the most from server logs (not dynamically, but just as  
a way of offering common pkgs).

Dan