Fwd: FreeBSD 7.1 Content

[Sticky Bit]

On Sunday 07 September 2008 06:46:37 Ken Smith wrote:
> The path I'm planning is based on these observations:
>
> 	- Many people believe you should just use sysinstall to install
> 	  the baseline system, and any packages/ports installs should
> 	  be done post-install.  Its hard to say that point of view is
> 	  wrong.
>
> 	- The baseline system and the ports are fundamentally different.
> 	  People should be aware of that from the beginning.
>
> 	- At least some of the packages on the ISOs are stale within a
> 	  week of release at times; a bit longer than a week in most
> 	  cases but ...

These points are very true.

> 	- My plans for DVD sized media (still uncertain how that will
> 	  factor into 6.4/7.1) are to provide CDROM sized ISOs that have
> 	  no packages on them at all (giving people who don't have DVD
> 	  drives something they can still install from) and one DVD
> 	  sized ISO that has packages.
>
> The path will be to finish what I started a while ago when I removed the
> X11 options in the "installation distributions" section of sysinstall by
> removing the last couple of tidbits that touch packages before you get
> to the "Would you like to view the list of available packages?" section
> of sysinstall (e.g. the offer to install Linux compatibility on i386).
> This will provide us with a clean separation of the baseline system from
> the packages.  After doing a baseline install you can choose to:
>
> 	- reboot and install ports/packages when it comes back up
> 	- switch install media to be an FTP server and get a larger
> 	  selection of packages to choose from
> 	- use the available packages if you're installing from DVD
>
> No matter which approach you use, you're clearly seeing a separation
> between the baseline system and the packages/ports.  If you want lynx or
> links or Gnome or KDE you're aware that they are packages/ports and
> simply select them.  If you didn't want them then you don't wind up with
> them sitting on your disk.  Basically I'm saying any of the things that
> may have been in the "Distributions" section of sysinstall before (X11
> stuff used to be in the Distributions) are now in the packages section
> along with all the other things that are packages.  And with the
> packages only being available on the DVD sized media we stop needing to
> deal with deciding what precious little amount of stuff is worthy of
> being on disc1 versus disc2/disc3/etc. and all the disc swapping that
> comes with CDROM sized media.
>
> And for at least some arch's we *might* be able to move the livefs
> support back onto disc1 if there are no packages there for CDROM sized
> media - I haven't had a chance to check if that's still feasible.

Very well! I hope you actually go this road and this really becomes true. It 
is the most advanced approach I read within this thread, covers pretty much 
all needs and make things really idiot proof (no offense meant). Please make it 
true! Thanks a lot!

Regards