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From: orc@pell.chi.il.us (Orc)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Impression
Date: 30 Dec 1995 17:18:51 -0800
Organization: Every flame is sacred, every flame is great
Lines: 62
Message-ID: <4c4odr$6pe@pell.pell.chi.il.us>
References: <4a6vve$l46@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu> <4bk0t7$nnq@mark.ucdavis.edu> <4blet7$hen@pell.pell.chi.il.us> <4bm2ke$3ur@mark.ucdavis.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pell.pell.chi.il.us
In article <4bm2ke$3ur@mark.ucdavis.edu>,
David E. O'Brien <obrien@cs.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>Orc (orc@pell.chi.il.us) wrote:
>: In article <4bk0t7$nnq@mark.ucdavis.edu>,
>: David E. O'Brien <obrien@cs.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>: >See, isn't the FreeBSD install logical and great? I think so, gets easier
>: >and better with each version
>:
>: Well, yes, but considering what it started with it's not saying
>: very much :-(
>
>Hum, I can't quite tell your position on this one. Are you saying that the
>installation program for 2.1.0 isn't too good, or that eariler ones were
>bad? If you feel 2.1.0 isn't too good, I would be interested in a straight
>forward, diplomatic reasons why.
I've not seen the 2.1.0 install yet. I'm told it's better than
the 2.0.5 install, so some of my criticisms may be out of date.
The two things which still stick in my mind as annoyances are
the disk labelling and the system not autoprobing for some
devices. The disk labelling is, after dealing with one of the
modern Linux installs, somewhat of a leap back into the 70s; It
took me a couple times around the loop of
partition/attempt-to-go-and-install before I remembered just why
labelling was there; it's certainly nicer to be told beforehand
that this is the step where you mount various partitions on various
filesystems. The autoprobing was a continual pain, because I keep
my scsi drivers and lance ethernet cards at, apparently,
nonstandard locations, and having to manually go in and set up the
i/o ports, dma, and irqs for those things (particularly on the
lance card, since it was sitting at the usual i/o address of 0x300,
but had irq 15 and dma 6 (instead of 9/5?), which went unnoticed
until after I went in and set up bt0 at 0x334, which reminded me
that maybe the reason that freeBSD wasn't detecting the device was
that it was living somewhere else. Somewhat annoying since the
Linux install on the same machine chugged through happy as a clam.)
I really like having the system autodetect hardware; it makes it
much easier to install a system when you've built up a new
workstation and have had to fit things around some horrible audio
device or another.
>I also tried
>to install Slackware 3.0, but it wouldn't reconize the install media in my
>CDROM Drive. Strange.
Well, you're not the only one who's had horror stories about
slackware 3.0; me, I'm avoiding this heathen ELF stuff until the
sun's had a chance to warm things up a bit; I'll stick with what
works today and leave the 3.0 experimentation for when the other
workstation comes back from a client site.
>It was an NEC SCSI cdrom drive, that everyone else
>reconized. Maybe my goof?
Perhaps; it's equally likely the kernel was confused.
____
david parsons \bi/ orc@pell.chi.il.us
\/