*BSD News Article 45073


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From: lparsons@eskimo.com (Lee Parsons)
Subject: Re: Slight flame from Linux user
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Keywords: Linux FreeBSD
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Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 21:45:51 GMT
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Arlie Davis <arlie@news.thepoint.net> wrote:
>Tim Pierce <twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu> writes:
>>People who aren't ready to get their hands dirty shouldn't
>>be installing or administering Unix.
>
>Attitudes like this are what is responsible for UNIX falling into a
>second-rate position today.  There is _no_ valid reason for allowing
>BSD's installation process to remain unfriendly.  [...]

Just to emphasize a point that Tim tried to make. (Tim? I think so but
the attribution has gotten a little confused). One of the reasons I 
resisted Linux was that it was too easy to install. It was a hand
holding process that had Zero relationship to how other OS's are installed.

I personally run FreeBSD to (in part) keep my Ex-Sysadmin hand in on the 
nuts and bolts of installations. A Linux install that doesn't force
me to get out the old calculator and figure out how big the partition
is would not be very useful to me.

>Old-world UNIX snobs who insist that we stay in the eighties are doing
>so because they are unwilling to change, and because they think it will
>help their job security.  Well, it will for a short while -- long enough
>to kill the last remaining shreds of market appeal for UNIX.

I have never heard anybody say BSD SHOULD NOT EVER have a good menu driven
installation process. I have heard a lot of people say Admins should know
what the menus do and that such a process is not really important 
compared to the new VM Code (or whatever). I would agree with both of those
statements.
-- 
Regards, 

Lee E. Parsons                  		
Systems Oracle DBA	 			lparsons@world.std.com