> No, a meta(package-system).  That is, if you're going to make a new
> installer that plops all of this junk (not an entirely neutral choice of
> words; (^&) onto the user's hard disk, *presumably* there will be some
> kind of interaction with the user.  This would amount to selecting from
> broad categories of packages, and/or specific packages.

Ah, something new. I don't think that would be particularly hard, however,
basically whats needed is the installer/upgrader/etc program interface and
package format that we want to stick with (I think the existing package
mechanisms should be fine, no need to reinvent the wheel when we already
have the tools to do what we want done)

> You can just direct them to the pkgsrc system, though; if it's too
> fine-grained for beginners (I doubt it, but will entertain it for the sake
> of argument), then create more meta-packages (here, I *do* mean what we
> already have).  I don't see the need to create a restricted, but fancy,
> point-and-click package installer layered on top of the existing package
> system.

I have wanted a nice interface for a while, not exactly point and click
though, I am thinking somethiing along the lines of FreeBSD's sysinstall.
/stand/sysinstall is the one thing I miss the most about FreeBSD: A simple
mechanism to do package stuff, configuration stuff, and the part I liked the
most, a nice disk partition interface. Sushi looks promising but it has a
lot of oddities about it, that I've noticed, though I haven't tried it
lately.

> (And if it's not point-and-click, or doesn't offer the user choices and
> flexibility, then I *really* don't see the point of not just using
> pkgsrc.)
> 

Whats wrong with a nice interface for pkgsrc? It could be part of the same
thing I was just talking about (something-ala-sysinstall) and maybe just a
"build from source" option instead of install from binary pkg.

> > > As for setting up X: It's *very* easy under XFree86 4.x.  At least it was
> > > for me, under 4.0.  (The only problem that 4.0 really had was that it
> > > generated a slightly bogus mouse configuration.  It either wanted
> > > /dev/mouse instead of /dev/wsmouse, or it wanted something like a PS/2
> > > mouse protocol instead of the WSmouse protocol.  If the autoconfig still
> > > bungles that, you can have a short script run sed over the config to fix
> > > it up.)
> >

That I didn't know, I didn't think X could do that. neato.

> > I've used both a PS2 and a USB mouse under NetBSD-current on i386 with X
> > 4.1.0 and 4.2.0 without encountering that problem. xf86cfg does the right
> > thing, on my system at least.
> 
> I never used xf86cfg.  Under XFree86 4.0, the X server can actually
> generate a config automatically.  The only thing that it screwed up was
> the mouse config.  I imagine that they fixed that by now; it's a pretty
> trivial thing.
> 
> 
> > > XFree86 configuration probably isn't going to be a major hurdle.  I don't
> > > know if the auto-configuration is anywhere near reliable enough to count
> > > on it from sysinst, but it certainly could make life easier for many
> > > end-users.
> >
> > xf86cfg is so much nicer than XF86Setup and xf86config. I think it might
> > also be worth considering switching from including XFree86 3.3.6 by default
> > to 4.2.0 (or whatever the latest in xsrc at the time of release is.) You
> > certainly get more (and better) hardware support with X 4.
> 
> Unless XFree86 4.x now supports *all* hardware supported by 3.x, I'm not
> sure that the statement about more hardware is irrefutable.  I would tend
> to count supported hardware by the number of installed systems with that
> type of hardware.  And, until NetBSD can do hardware accelerated 3D
> graphics, the newer (expensive) cards are not really all that appealing.
> (Not unless you dual-boot.)

Hmm. I was under the impression that 4.x did support everything 3.x did.
And as for newer cards, my Riva TNT2 wasn't by any means expensive, and it
performed like absolute crap in 3.x but flies in 4.x.

-Sean

-- 
/~\ The ASCII                         Sean Davis
\ / Ribbon Campaign                    aka dive
 X  Against HTML
/ \ Email!               http://eros.endersgame.net:8000/~dive