Re: Making desktop setup hard (Was: Two NetBSDs)

[Johnny Billquist <bqt%softjar.se@localhost>]

David Brownlee wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Feb 2009, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>
> > David Brownlee wrote:
> >
> > >     Random question for the day:
> > >
> > >         How much time has been wasted (duplicated time and time
> > >         again) by technically literate people who just wanted
> > >         a basic desktop system setup so they could work on
> > >         something that actually interested them, like adding
> > >         new pkgsrc packages or drivers for some item of USB
> > >         hardware?, or who just wanted to run the same OS for
> > >         development on their laptop as they were running on
> > >         their servers?
> >
> > Since you asked...
> > I never seem to "waste" much time on this. Getting the base system up, 
> > and X runnig usually goes rather fast. (But I'm also one of those guys 
> > who still use ctwm).
>
>     Its a nice lightweight WM :) I used it for a while (along
>     with fvwm, blackbox, fluxbox, pekwm, golem, and most recently
>     jwm).  The look on a friend's face when I switched his tiny
>     netbook from gnome+metacity to jwm was impressive - gnome
>     login ~5 seconds to finish, jwm: apparently instant.
>     Currently playing with xfce, which has improved a hell of
>     a lot since I last used it... but I digress.
>
>     Its not wasted time for you because you are comfortable with
>     the process. If you had bought a new machine and had to go
>     through a (to you) painstaking process to install Windows from
>     CD, enter a licence key, copy a network driver across via
>     USB key, install it, update online, register, and then goto
>     a webpage to run a special program to unlock some device on
>     the system so you could install NetBSD, how happy would you be?
>
>     I would expect you would never buy that machine... which
>     mirrors that large set of users will never install NetBSD.

True. But I contend that they will not install NetBSD anyway.
But hey, that is just my belief, and since it's all speculations about 
the future anyway, we can never prove which is more right.

But you asked how much time had been wasted by technically litterate 
people. I just gave you an answer for my small part. And for me, that 
was close to zero.
Don't start mixing the issues here. ;-)

>     Your answer "You must waste <---this much---> time on
>     something you care nothing about before you can join the
>     NetBSD ride" seems to mystify them, so they install Linux
>     on their desktops, and then maybe one of them puts it on
>     his servers because its nice to have the same environment
>     everywhere. The servers are a little more awkward for him
>     to administer, but he can set his laptop up exactly the
>     same as his servers.

People with that point of view will irrevocably be disappointed if they 
install NetBSD anyway. If not when doing the install of the base system 
it will be when they try to get unsupported hardware to work, 
unsupported software to work, and in the end realize that the software 
they really want to run cannot run at all.
Stuff that works "much better" in Windows, or Linux.

>     I remember the push back when NetBSD introduced sysinst over
>     the previous installation system. People also objected that it
>     wuld make installing too simple and would permit the less
>     technical to install NetBSD. For those who are fortunate
>     enough to have not installed NetBSD 1.2 or earlier the
>     install notes included:
>
>         "Before you begin, you should know the geometry of your
>         hard disk, i.e.  the sector size ... sectors per track
>         ...  tracks per cylinder ..., and the number of cylinders
>         ..."
>
>         "You should now be ready to install NetBSD.  It might
>         be handy for you to have a pencil, some paper, and a
>         calculator handy."
>
>         "If you wish to stop the installation, you may hit
>         Control-C at any time, but if you do, you'll have to
>         begin the installation process again from scratch."

I still don't use that fancy installer program. It's just messing things 
up, and I need to do cleanups after it have been around. Besides, 
creating the disk label and doing the partitioning isn't exactly rocket 
science (even though it could probably help new people if someone wrote 
a faq on it). And unpacking a bunch of tarballs don't exactly come 
acress as rocket science. And there isn't really that much more to it.

>     Why is this fanatical focus on stopping people who want
>     the graphic environment automatically installed so they
>     can get on with their work?" My natural working environment
>     is in a 'screen' session.  Often that screen is in a urxvt
>     or xterm, sometimes putty from my mobile phone, most often
>     its one of a set in urxvts from a remote box. I often
>     overlap the X and screen cut & paste buffers with different
>     content. I don't want to spend my lift fiddling with a
>     desktop configuration, yet I'm quite happy to write scripts
>     to recompile large chunks of pkgsrc to tweak compiler flags
>     or settings.
>
>     Coming back to the subject one thread back. If you feel
>     you want to take NetBSD in a different direction, you are
>     of course free to fork the code. I prefer to try to ensure
>     that any new features added for netbsd-desktop do not impair
>     NetBSD use on servers and related. I'm probably not even
>     going to run the new desktop package on my systems, but I
>     know a few friends who would...

I'm not trying to stop anyone from doing anything. I'm just trying to 
point out that this might not really be in the best interest of NetBSD, 
despite the envisioned influx of new users.

But as I've said before. In the end, noone can tell what others should 
do. It's all volunteer work. I just believe that the direction aimed at 
by core here is important (as well as wrong, according to me :-) ).

        Johnny

--
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt%softjar.se@localhost             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol