Selling FreeBSD

[Jon Mercer]

I'm not sure that going for a whizzy install is going to make for a 
wider adoption of BSD. Has anyone looked at the Lehey column in Daemon 
News, it does touch on this.

Personally, I've become a huge fan of going through and doing an 
'expert' install, whenever I get called upon to install FreeBSD; 
however, I remember having nightmares when I first came across it. My 
feeling was that a bit of better documentation of what is going on is 
what is required. Anyone could do that, including me, but I haven't, and 
I haven't seen any on the web, not that I've been looking. In any event, 
it needs to be highly visible when a user installs for the first time.

There are a number of high profile BSD sites, so someone's obviously 
managed some strong advocacy somewhere down the line (Yahoo, NASA, 
formerly Hotmail, etc. etc.) Is anyone succeeding in the UK? Who feels 
that this SCO nonsense is going to have an impact, either for the 
better, or for the worse?

Also, if this is going to become a big thread, should we move it to 
-advocacy?

Cheers,

Jon   :-)

Andrew Hodgson wrote:

><quote>
>The reason why FreeBSD trails behind Linux in the outside world is
>because 
>nobody is "selling" FreeBSD. It's debatable if this is a good thing or
>not.
></quote>
>
>
>Hi,
>
>Sorry if this has been discussed a thousand times before, but Paul
>Robinson's comment rang some bells with me. How does everyone feel about
>the issue of promoting and advocating FreeBSD? Has anyone succeeded in
>getting it implemented at work? Or in an educational setting?
>
>Being something of a beginner myself, I reckon that from a new users
>point of view what might be off-putting is the lack of a nice-looking
>install process, automatic detection and mounting of removable disks,
>and the lack of a point-and-click solution for updates, software
>install, and lower-level configuration, among other things. Obviously
>this adds to bloat, but this is what I see being implemented on Linux.
>Not that any of that made ME switch ;) but then I am a g---.
>
>Reading a recent interview with the core members of the Project, this
>kind of thing isn't a priority at the moment. Which is fine for geeky
>types like me, but I'd love to see a version that does a nice Redhat or
>Mandrake-style install, with software designed for X that interfaces
>with the various config files for you, in a foolproof way of course! I'd
>love to write it myself, I'm just not clever enough yet.
>
>Just my thoughts on the issue!
>
>Regards,
>
>Andrew
>
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>
>
>  
>