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OpenBSD Installation and Upgrading Installing and upgrading OpenBSD. |
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Recommend: A simple GUI for OpenBSD install
I wish to recommend that OpenBSD developers create a simple GUI to help novice users to install the OS.
If anyone had opted to use the "Expert Install" option of Debian, you would have realized how easy and intuitive the simple GUI was. Special note: if OpenBSD developers plan to take up my suggestion, please simplify the process by which one partitions the disk drive. Debian's "Expert Install" option does not even mention C/H/S or LBA. When I was using Debian for the first time, I was able to partition my disk drive without problem. |
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No.
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Almost all of the OpenBSD users here are end-users. And we have learned over the years that the social culture of the project needs to be understood by new users:
(And there are many platforms that have no graphics at all. I mentioned one to you in another of your many threads: an Alix. I run OpenBSD on several.) Last edited by jggimi; 13th July 2014 at 07:41 PM. Reason: typo. always typos. |
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Life is getting harder as we speak. Unemployment rears its ugly head from time to time. Recession cycles are getting shorter: big recessions occur once every 5 to 6 years in our lifetimes compared to the 1930s to 1990s. OpenBSD developers have lofty ideals but putting food on the table is the overarching primary concern. Maslow's hierarchy of needs applies to each and every one of us. I read on the internet that last year OpenBSD threatened to stop development of its project because it was running out of funds. Subsequently it received about $150,000, only for this year, I think? What about next year and the years following it? Debian, Ubuntu and Redhat do not have funding issues. OpenBSD should ask themselves why. IMHO aspiring to be the most secure OS does not contradict with being the most popular *nix OS. What do you think? Quote:
I was OK with it till the part where I have to partition my SSD for a multi-boot environment. I'm stumped by all the talk about cylinders, heads, sectors and sector geometry. Debian and Ubuntu took care of that for us who are technically or mathematically challenged. Why can't OpenBSD do the same for us? I was a bit shocked by the advisory in the official FAQ in which first time users are discouraged from installing OpenBSD in a multi-boot environment. No such advisory exists for Gentoo, ArchLinux, Mandriva, Debian and Ubuntu. I now understand why. It's because users are required to have good math skills to be able to calculate C/H/S or LBA sector values. If OpenBSD is to gain a wider acceptance among the public, it has to find ways to make the installation routine more user-friendly, or should I say, more novice user-friendly. Note: by "wider acceptance among the public", I'm thinking along the lines of "having sufficient funds to keep the OpenBSD going for a few more years". |
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No. Unlike every Linux you have ever used, or any commercial OS, the Project is very, very different. It has absolutely no interest in being the OS-for-everyone. None. If you don't like what they offer, you are welcome to go away. If you read through the rough-and-tumble archives of the Project's misc@ mailing list, you can see many examples of this latter suggestion.
The "market" for users of interest to the Project, such as it is, does not include non-technical, casual computer users. And that is why the openbsd-newbies mailing list and this forum are both unofficial. Quote:
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30 000 elevators in U.S. run OpenBSD as do majority of network switches and Internet infrastructure. That seem like a pretty good adoption rate in my book. Last edited by Oko; 3rd December 2014 at 04:44 AM. |
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That is one heck of a statement, and one I've never heard before. I'm intrigued - do you have more information about this, or perhaps a link to share?
(Sorry for the off-topic post.)
__________________
That's nothing a couple o' pints wouldn't fix. |
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There was a thread few years back on misc when somebody was nagging basically claiming that nobody uses OpenBSD because of unfriendly mailing list. One of the guys had it and just opened up and stated bluntly that he runs OpenBSD on 30000 elevators. I checked the name of the people made that post and sure enough the guy is the president of the company which does indeed run large numbers of elevators in U.S.
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Also, if OpenBSD's goal is to meet ONLY its members' needs, why release it at all? I think in releasing something to the public entails collaboration with that public; if not collaboration, a patient response to why something is not done or will never be done. I am new to OpenBSD and not exactly new to Unix/Linux; overall, the install procedure is not difficult and, yet, neither is it intuitive. Especially when trying to follow the automatic partitioning of slices... I have 16GB or RAM and the auto partitioner allocated 16GB of swap space! In 1995 swap should mirror RAM; in 2014 that might not be the case for almost all modern systems; further, the default list in disklabel slices is in some esoteric format not spelled out by disklabel(8) or fdisk(8). In the absence of options in 'p' (i.e., [b]ytes, [m]egabytes, [g]igabytes, etc.), what is the default list unit? No math I've found makes sense. I've noticed that OpenBSD attracts a lot of "RTFM" responses; the problem with that is that man/info pages are written by those who know for those who know but may need a little refresher on flags, etc. They are not friendly to new users... I would never, and I am assuming none of you would do the same, EVER point my wife to disklabel(8) and tell her to RTFM, figure it out and good luck. She would stick with Mac OS X or Linux rather than have to slog through the developers' esoteric man/info pages; she has tried and, being dyslexic, found it extremely difficult. Personally, though, I thought OpenBSD's install procedure to be great, and aside from a little more learning on my part, easy compared to other operating systems. Whole disk encryption is a breeze compared to most Linux distributions! Last edited by spitfire_ak; 20th August 2014 at 06:50 AM. Reason: Removed [LIST] from [QUOTE /] |
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http://www.openbsd.org/goals.html Quote:
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The OS's definitive documentation is its collection of man pages. However, they are not intended to be tutorials. The only official "How To" documents are the FAQ and its subsidiary documents such as the PF Users Guide. Last edited by jggimi; 20th August 2014 at 10:33 AM. Reason: typo |
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I like you. You're funny.
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See: Comment from Mr. Raadt ... OpenBSD is in very REAL trouble as of 2014. Hopefully, some company or person has stepped up to provide the much-needed funds.
I have a little money to donate, I paid for subscriptions to SUSE and am now moving on. I'm waiting to see how I feel about OpenBSD before investing more time & money. As for the OP, he asked a legitimate question: why no GUI install? Heck, I would go further, why no curses-based install, at the least? Is there a security reason or just a preference by the developers? |
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If you're looking for complexity and nonsense, OpenBSD isn't the project for you. Really. And that's OK. OpenBSD isn't the project for a lot of people. But now your extrapolations have gotten beyond the realm of silly. If a shell installer is something that's so major you wouldn't want to install OpenBSD, then don't install OpenBSD. Or you can stop complaining and do something about it. Worked well for me. But really, the GUI installer is something that's been asked time and time again. It's not gonna change. It's tiring to see people argue for something they haven't even attempted to understand. |
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In follow up, I was going to send a private message (PM) but you don't have them enabled for your account. So I'll post it here, since none of it is actually private.
As an example of commercial, end-user support services .... One of the services firms listed on the Project's Commercial Support page is M:Tier Ltd. They are particularly active in support of the OpenBSD community at large, and offer a number of free services such as binary packaging for OpenBSD-stable users. I mention them because their commercial services include ready-to-use Gnome workstation enviornments, something you expressed interest in. And regarding Gnome, their staff includes Antoine Jacoutot (ajacoutot@), who leads the OpenBSD Gnome porting team among his many other accomplishments for the Project. I don't know if they would be interested in supporting individual customers rather than their usual corporate fleets -- but you could certainly ask, if interested. http://www.mtier.org/solutions/os/openbsd/desktop/ |
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Perhaps you should consider hardening your Debian installations, rather than trying to dumb-down OpenBSD for the masses of Linux distro-hoppers. You will find that most BSD users don't give a damn about Linuxisms and concessions towards "user-friendliness."
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I agree on Linuxisms part but I vehemently disagree with your second claim. We really, really care about "user-friendliness". BSDs are some of the most user friendly systems in existence. The only problem is that BSDs are very peculiar about the choice of their friends and users.
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"user friendly" is a marketing term. And that's really the whole problem. From an individual's perspective it actually means: "how my other OS worked [and how I expect others to work]".
Most of the common proprietary GUIs are marketing devices - in that they strive to be distinct from the competition and provide something new/different just "because". Usability is generally sacrificed because the GUI has to make an impact, be "innovative" and grab the headlines - hence windows 8 "metro". These kinds of duff decisions are usually shareholder driven. The command line is user friendly to a person who knows how to use it. A clunky GUI, especially with huge buttons designed for touch screen may not be user friendly to everyone. A lot of people found gnome 3 user friendly, a lot did not, etc. |
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