GUI installer

alie

alie

why FreeBSD doesnt have GUI installer ? please give me a reason i think GUI installer is good for newbie

-Alie
 
Good question, i think this might be a good forward-to-devels
matter :)

For a noob (being one, too), a GUI-installer would be just
the preffered way, text-based installs are more difficult.
I recall playing around with an OpenBSD-version,
and you might guess, it was even worse than any other install
utility i have come across :)

Me personally can't give you any particular reason,
why a GUI-installer is still not included (or even, never planned?)
in any FreeBSD-version...
 
kamikaze said:
The FreeBSD installer is a GUI installer.

What you want is a prettier GUI or one that gives you less choices.
Click to expand...

As a non computer educated person I agree with the above comment 100%!
Why should be GUI better?
 
hmmm, good answer, but still GUI Installer with nice graphical environtment is better(eye catching). for me(new bie) text based installer is confusing, especially FreeBSD installer(Sysinstall) that have a lot of options/choices...

i think if FreeBSD have GUI installer that provide less choices, like desktop env, partition, password, etc can attract users to use it for desktop :)

and the fact is "world's getting lazier" :D

most of famous application, OS, handset/mobile phone/PDA have a nice GUI

-Alie
 
alie said:
why FreeBSD doesnt have GUI installer ? please give me a reason i think GUI installer is good for newbie

-Alie
Click to expand...
The one we have works well over all. It certainly gives me far fewer headaches than the Linux installers do. And definitely fewer than the Windows one does.

That being said, it will ultimately need to be replaced because of the "ZOMG ancient installer" problem, I'm not entirely sure what the problem really is because there is a basic install, and that's not any harder than the early stages of a Windows install. And one really ought to be printing out a set of install instructions the first time through any OS install.

I believe that there are a couple of projects up and running to add a more proper install program, but really a prettier less flexible GUI isn't going to do anything for people beyond making it less scary the first time through.
 
Why a GUI installer? Attract users to use it for desktop? Come one.. that's why PCBSD is around.

The current installer is the best choice as it can be as easily used for server and desktop installs. No need for bloat with a live CD or whatever.

FreeBSD needs to continue it's focus on reliability and flexibility not needless user friendliness.

Any FreeBSD user just needs to know that the Handbook exists, if he faces any obstacle while installing the Handbook provides the complete install procedure.
 
bsddaemon said:
No, it isnt GUI, it is text based.
Click to expand...
Sure it's a GUI. It has dialogues, windows, checkboxes. That it runs in text mode doesn't make it less of a GUI. It's just a technical limitation that makes it look less fancy.
 
bsddaemon said:
No, it isnt GUI, it is text based.
Click to expand...
It is a GUI. The fact that it's drawn with text characters instead of pixels makes no differences. The only thing it's missing that a Fedora or SuSE installer has is mouse support.

I would like to see a new installer, but not because I want something more graphical, but because sysinstall is getting long in the tooth. It needs to be replaced with something more streamlined, both architecturally and in terms of workflow.
 
GUI = Graphican User Interface
TUI = Text User Interface

It's a textbased user interface and not graphical. But this is not the key!

The UI can be improved because the navigation is not optimal. The improvement should be not realy graphical.

My experience with the current UI is not so good, because the selection of an option and the confirmation (OK-button) is realy tricky. I must always think if I should press RETURN or TAB or SPACE BAR. This has not directly to do with text or graphical UIs.

I think the text base UI can be improved. Or there should be a graphical UI with mouse support.
 
tangram said:
Why a GUI installer? Attract users to use it for desktop? Come one.. that's why PCBSD is around.

The current installer is the best choice as it can be as easily used for server and desktop installs. No need for bloat with a live CD or whatever.

FreeBSD needs to continue it's focus on reliability and flexibility not needless user friendliness.

Any FreeBSD user just needs to know that the Handbook exists, if he faces any obstacle while installing the Handbook provides the complete install procedure.
Click to expand...
I agree.
But, quoting the wiki:
Support for installing soft-RAID devices (for starts, gmirror).
...
The intention is that the back-end is available for use for multiple front-ends, some of which could have user interfaces (either graphical or textual), but some of which could be completely automated (essentially a batch file of XML-RPC calls).
Click to expand...
Good old sysinstall is great, proven, reliable, but it would be nice to have some of the geoms' goodies available at install time, or it's just me?
 
Considering that FreeBSD is mainly a server operating system, I see no reason to have a graphical installer. We should also keep in mind that some people use very old hardware, and may be unable to use a resource hungry graphical installer. Of course, if we get a graphical installer like finstall, it should be possible to choose whether you want to use the graphical or text-based installer.

Whatever happens, I must admit that I've used better installers than sysinstall, although it does its job quite well.
 
The current sysinstall just works great on any system and has a small footprint while retaining loads of helpful information. Another thing I like about it is that you can use it for loads of after-install configuration and even package install.

Is it the best installer for *nix systems? No, it needs to support additional stuff like support for software raid, zfs, kill the disc swap (6.4 already fixed this I believe), etc.

Imho, the default should still follow ncurses approach with maybe a GUI as an option.
 
I love the FreeBSD installer.. there's no OS that installs faster than the FreeBSD Expert install. I doubt that any GUI installer can match that speed & flexibilty.
 
I think that there are other things that need to be improved first before making a more fancy installer.
As Barnie said:
My experience with the current UI is not so good, because the selection of an option and the confirmation (OK-button) is realy tricky. I must always think if I should press RETURN or TAB or SPACE BAR. This has not directly to do with text or graphical UIs.
Click to expand...
and I agree.

Other than that, people coming to FreeBSD already have at least some small experience with Unix-like OSes thus it is quite easy for them to make an installation through sysinstall. If not, then this text-based-you-name-it-installer is their baptism of fire.

I like the way the installer is and thinking of FreeBSD as an open source project I'd say that priority must be set to other fields such as less CD's shifting during installation etc.
 
GUI could help during installation

An installation procedure needs some information and decisions from the human installer. Problem is that first users of FreeBSD are not that skilled as many forum members here. Remember your own first installation of an OS.

So what can a first (desktop-)user expect from a completed FreeBSD installtion routine?

1. Hacking on the keyboard in his language.
2. Using his functionable wheelmouse.
3. Looking at reasonable monitor resolution.
4. Hearing his heavy metal CD without consultion of any handbook.
5. Having a testpage printed on his printer.
6. Have a safe internet connection if desired.​

Now think for a moment, and guess how long it takes a person to get all 6 points with no UNIX/Linux experience. Do I hear someone laughing? How did you guys start?

For now a newbie needs a working XP with internet next to his FreeBSD installation project to google all the information he needs to finish the setup. Why? Cause reading the handbook is just not enough. You have to get some understanding for what you are doing. That's the point and this leads into trial and error loop with (hopefully) knowledge as exit. But frustration is an exit too.

A good installation routine does not have to be necessarily a GUI, but assisting hints for installation can better be realized with a GUI. Just a nice GUI for distraction is for the bin (how often do you want to look on it?).

Keep in mind, that success stories of any OS depend on the growing number of systems installed.

-Erratus
 
You should try OpenBSD if you feel FreeBSD is difficult.

The first OS I tried in reply to the post above was 95 or 98 upgrade disk (Was 8yrs old or so if I recall) I did a fresh reformat without the full install cd, had to do some dos stuff.

I like the FreeBSD installer compared to CentOS or Debian for example. I didn't learn anything in particular using it, it's documented well but you get a hands on feeling, once your in FreeBSD it's a basic server OS which you may transform into workstation/desktop usage. So either way you're going to have to work alittle bit to get GUI's.

PC-BSD, DesktopBSD both exist for this purpose.

Now the OpenBSD installer, that was a fun experience
 
Erratus said:
An installation procedure needs some information and decisions from the human installer. Problem is that first users of FreeBSD are not that skilled as many forum members here.
Click to expand...
No, not at first.

Erratus said:
How did you guys start?
Click to expand...
I screwed up and tried it until I got it right.

Erratus said:
But frustration is an exit too.
Click to expand...

But, if you do persist, you will appreciate what you have learned. FreeBSD forces you to understand the OS and your hardware. Frankly put, a first time user that quits because it is "too hard" is no great loss.
 
I never understand why people feel they should keep things harder just to keep "newbies" out. Not everyone agrees with this and certainly not everyone that posted but obviously some people do.

Adding finstall (or whatever gui variant) does not mean one or the other. Most certainly there would just be an additional option on booting to choose the graphical installer in an X envrionment.

So why are people having a hard time with this? The text installer isn't going anywhere and the graphical may prove useful. Embrace the opportunity for change. You wouldn't be forced to change one thing in effort to help others.

Boggles my mind sometimes.
 
The benefit of a new installer we can get rid of sysinstall at last which is a PITA to maintain and enhance.
Sysinstall doesn't allow a user to use all the fine things like gmirror, gjournal, geli, ZFS, ...
PC-BSD's GUI installer allows you to install on ZFS or select gjournaling, but why should this only be for desktop users? I can't wait for finstall to get finished. :)
 
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