On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Greg Lehey wrote:
> 2.  NetBSD.  The install program doesn't look as sexy as FreeBSD, but
>     it works well, and it's fast.  There's a good reason for it being
>     fast: it leaves you with a half-configured system.  [Caveat: This
>     was with 1.4-RELEASE about 1=BD years ago.  It could have changed
>     since.

Right, it doesn't give you an ICQ client. ;-)

Between "absolutely unconfigured" and "everything possible configured (X,
apps, ...)" there are many stages, and the one that NetBSD 1.5 leaves you
at is that of the core OS running, networking configured (if requested),
all services turned off, no GUI.

If a user wants to move for a server or desktop config then is his choice,
and he can move from there. The system does not assist these steps,
though, and the user is expected to know his ways around X, adding pkgs,
etc., though. I think that's where users new to NetBSD are a bit left
alone, but maybe this will change some day with a "post installation"
config assistant/wizard. An initial commit of such a tool called "sushi"
was committed to NetBSD-current the other day, and we'll see if it will
meet user expectations. :)


> 5.  Debian Linux (any release).  It took me four separate attempts to
>     get the *(&*( to recognize my Ethernet board.  A number of Linux
>     experts (real experts, not self-styled ones) helped me in the
>     process.  There seems to be no standard way to probe and recognize
>     an Ethernet board in Linux, you need to know which driver to use,
>     or try each in sequence.
>
>     Apart from that, Debian's packaging system is terrible.  After 4
>     months of messing around with it, I discovered that I didn't have
>     Netscrape on the machine, and that I needed it for comparison with
>     FreeBSD.  I found Netscrape on the CDs, but the installation
>     procedure insisted on changing libc as part of the installation.
>     Sorry, I can't understand that.  That's when I moved the box to
>     RedHat.

I think both of the points you tell here (manual frobbing with drivers and
3rd party software messing with system software) shows that Linux is
closer to Windows than some people would like to admit.


> I've also installed Open Desktop and XENIX, but that was a while ago.
> They were even more painful.

Maybe I can add one here:

Solaris 8/x86: If you make the mistake to try installing from the
=09"installation" CD, you will only get one question, and that is if
=09the installer may nuke your whole harddisk for getting some swap
=09space. This is suboptimal when you want to run another OS on
=09your harddisk. The solution is to NOT use the "installation" CD
=09but start with the "software 1" CD, from which you get the X
=09based installer that you also know from the sparc edition.
=09Installation itself is a breeze, first asking all parameters
=09(timezone, disk partitioning, options to install etc.). The only
=09confusing place is that it doesn't make it clear if DNS or NIS
=09information is requested in one place. After that, the installer
=09runs and reboots. When the system comes up, it asks for a root
=09password to be set, and installs the rest of the system from the
=09second CD. After another bootup, the system comes up fine with
=09a CDE login and full networking, including IPv6.


 - Hubert

--=20
Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>