Pain and Glory from the Trenches of the IT World

I read today about the finstall effort for FreeBSD. It is a GUI installer for FreeBSD. Although it sounds like a helpful tool for some users, I don’t think I’d want it to replace the existing sysinstall installation system.

One of the main benefits of sysinstall is that it’s not a GUI installer. This means that it has relatively minimal requirements when it comes to video hardware. Furthermore, it is very usable when using only the keyboard. Thus, it isn’t necessary to even have a mouse available. So it remains a very viable option, especially in hardware-limited situations.

I was disappointed today to hear that the release of KDE 4.0 will be delayed by two months. The delay is caused by the insertion of two extra betas.

But this isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it shows quite clearly how the KDE crew has a great grasp of the balance between releasing a product as soon as possible, but also releasing it with a reasonably high level of quality.

I’m a staunch supporter of putting old, but working, computers to good use again. Personally, I have repurposed numerous systems back into production after they were deemed to be too old, and replaced with newer hardware. One of my favourite tools for enabling this is NetBSD. As described on the NetBSD Web site, “NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system available for many platforms, from large-scale server systems to powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices.”