Re: Please forgive a blatant plug: I reviewed v10 for the Reg

[Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola%libero.it@localhost>]

Ciao Liam!

Liam Proven wrote:
> I really wish there were more technology sharing between the BSDs.

There is actually, but it is never easy. I have seen good transfer 
between NetBSD and OpenBSD in the years, including drivers and such.

> Dragonfly has the best installer, IMHO, but of course it has many
> fewer options to cover.

I only use the "canonical" three. I must say as a user I like NetBSD and 
OpenBSD best.
Of course the less platforms the easier it is. Things like partitioning, 
bootloader complicate things.

I think NetBSD has a quite good installer in many aspects. Quick to 
setup, has a very convenient utility, network setup.
Essentially the worst part is partitioning, but it is a tricky matter. 
On classic BIOS PC setup it works quite well though... quick and fast.
Try to partition MacPPC and you get crazy.

> FreeBSD is the worst inasmuch as it does the least complete job.
I agree... however it has some interesting points.
I think Debian has a good, but complicated, heavy installer. NetBSD 
could learn something from it, but not too much.
Debian has a decent partitioning tool

> Some OpenBSD folks are angry with me because I criticise its disk
> partitioner. When I tell them the config I work with and they recoil
> and go "OMG that is _impossible!_"

OpenBSD are complicated people.. but they do good stuff. Also the prompt 
based installer is quite good! Upgrading is excellent! But certain 
things are a bit extreme..... like no dhcp setup (must test latest 
though, maybe they changed it again).

> The point being: cross-platform installers that work on multiple very
> different distros with different packaging tools are 100% a thing.
I'm not expert there, but they should have peraps more per

> I am sure it would be possible to write a program which, when run,
> tests the console or terminal to determine if it can use colour and
> cursor controls, and if it can, which presents a
> cursor-key-driven-menu based UI with CUA-style controls -- but  if the
> terminal does not, then falls back gracefully to simple numeric or
> letter-choice menus.

Terminal type does that for you... and NetBSD install works well even 
ona 9600 baud serial vt100, which is really legacy technology.

> Long-term users often tell me that they do not notice the issues
> because they simply upgrade from one version to the next and never see
> the installer. Well, in that case, offer that opportunity to visitors
> as well: it would be to the benefit of all of the BSD family if the
> projects supplied pre-installed and pre-configured VM images for
> direct download, so that the curious could simply download an OVA
> file, import it into the hypervisor of their choice, and try the OS
> out without installing it at all.

Yes, upgrading sometimes does not well test the bare install. However 
both are important applications.
I tend to too to upgrade... In the case of NetBSD however you still test 
a big part of the install - except partitioning. You do all steps!

I just did an upgrade on SPARC64 and it worked wonderfully.



Cheers,

Riccardo