Subject: Re: Ease of installation (was: Nice to see NetBSD mentioned. However...)
To: None <hubert@feyrer.de>
From: Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net>
List: netbsd-advocacy
Date: 01/09/2001 13:49:40
>> 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. ;-)

and we all know how important *that* is.  i think *that alone* pretty
much puts the writer of the original article in a separate class.

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

i tried solaris8/sparc from the first cd and was plainly put,
confused.  so was it, apparently, since it didn't really know how to
deal with the serial console.  it *expected* me to have a graphics
console (huh?!).  once i tried again with the software 1 cd, as you
suggest above, i was good to go.  but we're getting off topic here a
little...

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