BootBlocks.

[talon at lpthe.jussieu.fr]

Andreas Hauser wrote:

> 

> The thing is once you installed BSD and learned its ways it
> gets easy. While on the otherhand the more "userfriendly" Linux

We are explicitely speaking of newcomers here, not of people who
have taken pains of reading a several hundred pages "handbook",
or have previously used FreeBSD or NetBSD for several years.

> distros with those "marvelous" tools make it seem like an endless
> learning curve. And that's not even considering the constant evolution
> of the Linux kernel itself (which still supports 3 generations of
> packetfiltering).

As if FreeBSD did not support 3 completely different packet filters
ipfw, ipfilter and pf.

> 
> And don't forget the BSD besides Desktop BSD don't state as goal
> to conquer the Desktop of peoples grandmothers.
> And especially DragonFly aims at Cluster and performance.

I understand that. I am also extremely sceptic on the interest of
the cluster stuff, but let us say i am uninformed. Knowing a certain number
of so-called "computer professionals" i am quite convinced they dont want
to read hundred pages more than your proverbial grandmother. Which means
that if such reading is required they will fly away at high speed towards
greener pastures. You can multiply this by an order of magnitude if
documentation is not even existent.

> 
> What i really don't though is that installation is a problem.
> The README is doing a great job. And the BSDinstaller is superb.
> 

Your opinion. Let us ask 100 average people how do they rate
the Ubuntu installer and the BSDinstaller, and come back after. From
my own judgement it is slightly better than freebsd sysinstall on some
points and worse on others, and light years behind most decent
Linux installers (Mandrake, Fedora, etc.).



-- 
Michel Talon