Re: Any thoughts on Graphical install UI?

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• In reply to: Joaquin Menchaca: "Any thoughts on Graphical install UI?"
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Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 01:30:59 -0600
To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org

I'm against this idea. Why? Because some of us use lower-end machines
and having a graphical install ups the memory requirement for the
installation. Such installers are fine for desktop machines, but for
servers and networking machines, they just get in the way since that
much more RAM and processing power is needed for the installation.

When I tried to install Red Hat 7.3 back in 2002, it required 32 MB of
RAM just to run the installer. A lot of this was because it was
graphical. FreeBSD's sysinstall, on the other hand, requires only 16 MB
(and other BSDs require even less) thanks to the fact that it's not
graphical. I don't want to see FreeBSD go in that direction.

Then there's the issue of how to fit a graphical installer on floppies.
Some of us still have to use floppies for booting the installer (and
then getting the actual files for FreeBSD via FTP) for various reasons,
and having a GUI installer would make that more difficult.

I do agree that FreeBSD could use an easier installation program, as
there are several hidden pitfalls in sysinstall, but I don't think a GUI
installer is the answer. An easier-to-understand curses-based installer
would be a better solution.

Just my two cents on this issue.

- Dave V.

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 20:22:18 -0800
Joaquin Menchaca <linuxuser@finnovative.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Many Linux flavors both commericial and free have attractive UIs for
> installation and package selection, and even to some degree
> partitioning and formatting of hard drives.
>
> Is there any thought of doing this for FreeBSD? Having an attractive
> UI, ala Fedora and/or gentoo would definately help attract more novice
>
> users to the FreeBSD world.
>
> Just a thought. Don't know if this was discussed before, as I'm a
> newbie. :-)
>
> -- jm
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