[geeks] BSD Questions

[Jonathan Patschke]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2011, Rick Hamell wrote:

>> The biggest caveat is that the installer does not support installing to
>> ZFS; you have to perform the installation manually. It's not difficult,
>> but it is a rather horrid first introduction to the operating system.
>> I'd hoped to find time to hack ZFS support into the installer, but $ork
>> has been eating all my time for the past few months.
>
> This has been my argument about FreeBSD for years. The installer...
> sucks. And hasn't gotten any better at all.

It's a pretty minor thing, though.  You don't strictly need the installer,
and you only run it once.  After the system is in-place, you can upgrade a
live system from release to release (or even track -STABLE, if you really
want).

That said, I do wish it were a little less fragile in the face of errant
key presses.  I can't count the times I've accidentally middle-clicked
into an terminal with the installer up and had my VM or remote system get
completely hosed as a result.

Still, worse installers have thrived.  IRIX inst, SunOS 4-era suninstall,
and that bletcherous HP-UX thing come to mind.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke  |
Elgin, TX          |  Sent from your rooted trendy mobile device.
USA                |