>One of the reasons I use NetBSD is because I am not a new UN*X user and
>I don't want my hand held.  I don't want to be insulated from the
>process.  I want full control over the raw system.  I would wager that
>there are a lot of users of NetBSD out there that use NetBSD/i386 over
>FreeBSD (i386 only) for that very reason.  
>
>Sure, I think it's great to be able to come up with a slick installer
>for people that seem to *need* hand-holding, but please leave the
>ability to do a "raw" install. :)

Well, of *course*.  Installing initial bootblocks and a first-time
disklabel with only the tools in the install disk is damn awkward.
(If you want `raw', you mean ignoring the scripts too, right?)
I usually end up clonig one from another system.

Personally, I find the UI for creating a disklabel in sysinst nicer
than any of the alternatives (install script or disklabel -E with
EDITOR=ed) on the instlal media.  sysinst has let me do anything  wanted.

After that all one needs to do is fetch or mount the tarballs, and
then unpack them by hand.

How is sysinst going to stop you from doing any of this?

Besides, on other ports which don't use an MBR, there's almost
nothing sysinst does that you _don't_ have full control over.