zennybsd said:
MaybeI am old-styled sysadmin, but I found sysinstall having more options than bsdinstall.
The beauty of bsdinstall is that it is
just an installer. It doesn't give you options for configuring the system, it doesn't have 40 bajillion screens to flip through, it doesn't have 14 different ways to start the install, it doesn't clutter up the screen with options no one has clicked on in umpteen years, etc.
You partition your disk. You install the OS. You reboot into the OS. Once the OS is installed and booted, you can configure it to your heart's content, using the tools that come with the OS, and not trying to shoehorn an installer into a system configuration tool.
Plus, the bsdinstall CD is a LiveCD, so anything you can do from a shell in FreeBSD, you can do at a shell via the installer. So, if you want any kind of complex install setup, you just drop to a shell, run the commands needed, pop back to the installer and carry on. Works great for setting up
gmirror(8),
hastd(8),
gpart(8) partitioning,
zfs(8), etc.
bsdinstall gets out of your way, lets you do things how you want, and just gives you a bootable OS.
Compared to sysinstall, it's like a glass of ice cold beer after a long day at the beach.
But as a sysadmin, I like to create configurations from ground up editing the /boot/loader.conf and /etc/rc.conf and other files making me aware what is where, and implications of the changes to system further helping me debug the system ;-)
IOW, you like bsdinstall more than sysinstall.
PC-BSD already has a comprehensive installer like bsdinstall which has an option to install freebsd-core only and with zfs option if somebody wants. The only problem with their live CD is booting is a hit and trial or guesswork (works in some machines and freezes in others, I tried in several machines so far).
PC-BSD installer GUI is nice, but limiting in what you can do with it. I could not get a gmirror-based install to work, nor a 24-drive ZFS pool to work, nor even a 2-disk ZFS pool. If you go with the defaults, the PC-BSD installer is nice. But it's not a LiveCD, it doesn't provide you with a shell (that I could find). For setting up a desktop, it works nicely. Not so much for multi-disk server installs.
Fortunately, bsdinstall and pc-sysinstall are merging in the future, so we should get the power and simplicity of both.