FreeBSD 7.1 Content

[Jim Pingle]

Wesley Shields wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 06:28:44PM -0600, Dan Allen wrote:
>> 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.
>
> No thanks.  This means you have to have a working connection to install
> firefox via this method.  Since not everyone will have that it is still
> necessary to bundle the firefox package on the media, bringing us right
> back to the very issue you are trying to solve.

Could this not also be resolved another way?

Most desktops these days have DVD drives. If someone wants a bootable
desktop-targeted release with X, Firefox and such, why not make that a DVD
instead of trying to shoehorn all of this into a CD? Most of the older
machines with aging CD-ROM drives or without a DVD drive may not have the
horsepower to run a live CD with X anyhow. My servers only have CD-ROM
drives, but then again they wouldn't be using a desktop-oriented live CD
with X either. :-)

Sure, the download would be (much?) larger, but you would have a lot more
room to work with.

The CD installs are great for me, and have worked well for years.
Personally, I install, update to -STABLE from a local cvsup mirror, then use
an updated ports tree or install packages remotely. The packages on CD are
out of date practically from the moment they are placed there, so I rarely
use them. The only package I regularly used was cvsup-without-gui, which has
been replaced by csup in the base system.

Also, is not Ubuntu a "downstream" release of Debian, much like FreeSBIE and
PC-BSD are "downstream" of FreeBSD? If you want to compare apples to apples,
you might investigate those choices a little closer.

Jim