On 1999-Dec-14 18:36:04 +1100, Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>As far as the successor to sysinstall goes, I think it would be
>nice to have both a console version and an X version, with some X
>tookit such as Lesstif or Qt, or Tcl/Tk.
I know Jordan mentioned Qt before his over-enthusiastic hand-waving
made him over-balance, but Lesstif and Qt (or anything else related to
X11) have a number of serious problems.
Firstly, size: One of sysinstall's requirements is that it fit (along
with a variety of other related commands) onto a floppy disk. Last
time I checked, the /stand bundle (sysinstall + friends) was ~640K.
The smallest X-server (XF86_VGA16) is 1.7MB (plus libraries). I don't
have either Qt or Lesstif installed, but from previous dealings with
Motif, it's several times the size of the Xserver. Unless we want to
mandate the use of ZIP drives (or similar) as FreeBSD install
floppies, we're limited to a syscons (or VTxxx) sysinstall.
The second problem is that X11 needs a fair amount of configuration
before it will work. Whilst the VGA16 server forms a convenient
lowest-common-denominator position, it offers no real advantages over
a character-mode installation (same screen resolution and number of
colours) and significantly poorer performance.
Given the primary mission of sysinstall is to load FreeBSD, I'd
go so far as to say that developing an X version would be wasting
valuable developer resources (IMHO, of course).
Peter
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