On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 03:42:22PM +0200, Raimo Niskanen wrote: > On Wed, Sep 19, 2007 at 07:18:05AM -0400, Nick Holland wrote: > > Raimo Niskanen wrote: > > > A lot of people has praised the current OpenBSD installer. > > > I too. I think it is at the right level and does the right > > > things, without unneccesary hazzle. > > > > > > But... > > > > > > There are a few things that I remember really missing when I was > > > a beginner, and being nice to beginners is a good thing: > > > > > > 1) Not every time did I have another machine to go to the > > > OpenBSD web site and read the install guide and related docs > > > online. It is almost necessary in order to succeed as a beginner, > > > and it could be improved upon. > > > > > > Why not put the install guide and disk partitioning guide on > > > the CD (maybe it is), and give very visible hints on how to > > > mount and read them during the installation from a parallel > > > console (i386) or how to exit to a shell to read during > > > installation. > > > > 1) there are no multiple consoles on the install kernel. > > Ouch!
How big a deal would it be to do that? > > > 2) I really think it would be excessively awkward to be trying > > to read docs on the same machine you are installing to. > > Yes. But not impossible :-) > > > 3) the CD set provides much of this in printed form. > > But not any good disk partitioning examples. > > > > > Granted, I may be an extreme case, but I really can't imagine > > there are a lot of people installing OpenBSD on their one-and- > > only computer who couldn't have at least printed out some docs > > before hand. > > > > Well, it is hard to know beforehand for the beginner which > documents are worth printing, and for a long while I did not > have a printer. To print the installation guide is unfortunately > not enough. Selected parts of the FAQ or some of the documents > the installation guide points to is also necessary. > > > > 1b)Having the partitioning guide available while installing > > > is maybe good enough, but it would also be nice if there > > > was a disklabel template for large enough disks that > > > created / swap /var /tmp /usr sufficient for a potent > > > desktop install capable of kernel and ports tree compilation, > > > and the rest on /home. And one for really small disks where there is no hope of being able to compile anything; like my current 850 MB drive. According to the docs, that's not enough room. So I have everything in a (/) and b (swap). Once I get the box set up, I'll be able to see what sizes are needed and can reinstall with proper partitioning. /home is quite small. > > > > actually, the FAQ provides a pretty good example for this (if I > > do say so myself! :) I've actually been wanting to add some > > other partitioning examples (for 1G, 4G, 20G hds with some > > specific apps), but obviously it isn't there yet. :-/ > > > > Yes, it is excellent. But the whole FAQ is too much to print. > Especially on my slow dot-matrix printer with a broken ribbon advance. That's a lot of knob-twiddling. :) > > I guess many new users have very good reasons to why they want > to test OpenBSD on a certain machine, and to why it must have > other OSes too. If you have a spare machine you can take to > install an unknown OS (OpenBSD) just for fun, it is probably > because the machine is too old or to broken to be usable. > My 486 now will only run OpenBSD or NetBSD (or old versions of Debian, dos, whatever). Would it be difficult to provide on the CD and perhaps a tarball on FTP a directory structure that would allow an option from the installer (either on the same screen or a separate terminal if that was possible) to run lynx to read the FAQ directly off the CD? Doug.
