actually, last year i tried the installation of all 3 *BSD's as well as a couple linux distros and OpenBSD was, IMHO, by far the "best" installation process!
in most installations now-a-days (eg RH, windoze...), you put the CD in, reboot, click OK at a couple questions, let it do the work and hopefully after a bit of waiting, everything (OS, X, packages...) is installed.
the main problem with this is that if something goes wrong (eg. you have a weird monitor and need to tweak things around before you find the right setting), you're most of the time screwed! you don't really know what went wrong, you often can't even go back and try a different setting.
the nice thing about OpenBSD is that it's simple: in order to install it, well you first need to install the kernel and a few other required things (very minimal). and that's it, you're now done with the "installation" process.
it's true that it's more involved than the click-and-pray method where everything is done for you (or hidden from you depending on how you look at it) by the script but on the other hand, you know exactly what's going on, you have total control, if you want it different, you can do so; if something goes wrong, you have a much better idea of where the problem is and fixing it will be a lot easier. since you know what happened during the install, you're also much better off to administer your new machine. with RH, after the install, you're as clueless about linux as you where before.
once this very basic install is done (couple minutes) you can reboot and you have a functional machine. it runs great! you have no X, no apps but you can actually use it for a lot of things... maybe not play quake but figuring out what your install problem is, reading documentation are things that are _extremely_ useful to be able to do as you're installing... you can then start attempting to install X if you wish and since your machine is already up and running, you can actually look up READMEs on how to get stupid XF86 to work on your weird setup without having to go back and forth with your roommate's computer. you can try different setups without having to restart the whole install because your graphics card messed up the cheesy RH install script.
if you want to install packages, you can do so anytime using the ports system (which rocks! and should be used for linux distros too!) just as you would install any package from then on. installing your first packages should in no way be different than adding extra packages afterwards, it just makes things more confusing for the novice user to have all these different ways to do the same thing at different times...
the click-and-hope scripts a la RH are great if all you want is a linux machine which you're just going to use to surf the web (in a similar way that windows is kinda-great if all you want to do is use a word processor:) ).
if you're a novice user and you actually want is learn more about how your computer works, how to administer it and how to fit it to your needs, the OpenBSD install is the best i've seen! it's simple and clear. it's true that it's lower level than others but you know what's going on and you learn tons from it.
it doesn't start with the assumption that the user is too dumb to understand what's going on so it should do all it can to hide the details from you (as does MS and many linux distros more and more), instead it tries to make it as simple as possible so that you can actually understand the details (since you have to go through them yourself).
i ran OpenBSD for quite some time and i didn't care a bit about all the security aspects. the only reason i chose OpenBSD over the other BSD's and linux is because of the elegance of how it dealt with things such as install and ports.
> All packages and core components have > been recompiled with CPU optimizations > for all Pentium-class processors > (Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, > Celeron, AMD K6/K6-2, Cyrix 6x86, > Cyrix MII, etc...). This allows 5 to > 30% of speed gain to your system!
what about the optimization stuff? has anyone noticed the difference?
Slashdot Mirror
after RSI, people often switch to voice recognition and tend to get voice strain (http://ii2.ai.iit.nrc.ca/VoiceCode/voiceStrain.ht ml).
can't wait to switch to directly using my brain...
actually, last year i tried the installation of all 3 *BSD's as well as a couple linux distros and OpenBSD was, IMHO, by far the "best" installation process!
:) ).
in most installations now-a-days (eg RH, windoze...), you put the CD in, reboot, click OK at a couple questions, let it do the work and hopefully after a bit of waiting, everything (OS, X, packages...) is installed.
the main problem with this is that if something goes wrong (eg. you have a weird monitor and need to tweak things around before you find the right setting), you're most of the time screwed! you don't really know what went wrong, you often can't even go back and try a different setting.
the nice thing about OpenBSD is that it's simple: in order to install it, well you first need to install the kernel and a few other required things (very minimal). and that's it, you're now done with the "installation" process.
it's true that it's more involved than the click-and-pray method where everything is done for you (or hidden from you depending on how you look at it) by the script but on the other hand, you know exactly what's going on, you have total control, if you want it different, you can do so; if something goes wrong, you have a much better idea of where the problem is and fixing it will be a lot easier.
since you know what happened during the install, you're also much better off to administer your new machine. with RH, after the install, you're as clueless about linux as you where before.
once this very basic install is done (couple minutes) you can reboot and you have a functional machine. it runs great! you have no X, no apps but you can actually use it for a lot of things... maybe not play quake but figuring out what your install problem is, reading documentation are things that are _extremely_ useful to be able to do as you're installing...
you can then start attempting to install X if you wish and since your machine is already up and running, you can actually look up READMEs on how to get stupid XF86 to work on your weird setup without having to go back and forth with your roommate's computer. you can try different setups without having to restart the whole install because your graphics card messed up the cheesy RH install script.
if you want to install packages, you can do so anytime using the ports system (which rocks! and should be used for linux distros too!) just as you would install any package from then on. installing your first packages should in no way be different than adding extra packages afterwards, it just makes things more confusing for the novice user to have all these different ways to do the same thing at different times...
the click-and-hope scripts a la RH are great if all you want is a linux machine which you're just going to use to surf the web (in a similar way that windows is kinda-great if all you want to do is use a word processor
if you're a novice user and you actually want is learn more about how your computer works, how to administer it and how to fit it to your needs, the OpenBSD install is the best i've seen! it's simple and clear. it's true that it's lower level than others but you know what's going on and you learn tons from it.
it doesn't start with the assumption that the user is too dumb to understand what's going on so it should do all it can to hide the details from you (as does MS and many linux distros more and more), instead it tries to make it as simple as possible so that you can actually understand the details (since you have to go through them yourself).
i ran OpenBSD for quite some time and i didn't care a bit about all the security aspects. the only reason i chose OpenBSD over the other BSD's and linux is because of the elegance of how it dealt with things such as install and ports.
linux distros could learn a _lot_ from it!
> All packages and core components have
> been recompiled with CPU optimizations
> for all Pentium-class processors
> (Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III,
> Celeron, AMD K6/K6-2, Cyrix 6x86,
> Cyrix MII, etc...). This allows 5 to
> 30% of speed gain to your system!
what about the optimization stuff?
has anyone noticed the difference?