Ars Technica article on FreeBSD new user experience

[Baptiste Daroussin]

On Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 02:34:20PM -0500, Kyle Evans wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 2:05 PM Ed Maste <emaste at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >
> > Jim Salter has an article in Ars Technica discussing his experience
> > with FreeBSD 12.1 as a desktop:
> > https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-linux-distro-review-freebsd-12-1-release/
> >
> > There are some points in there that might involve misunderstanding,
> > but there are also a number of real issues raised about the experience
> > a new (or newish) desktop FreeBSD user will have. It will be a good
> > idea for us to examine these, and offer advice or corrections if
> > appropriate, and otherwise look how we can improve the FreeBSD
> > experience for new users.
> 
> Random small collection of thoughts I had after reading this:
> 
> 1. re: LiveCD/Amnesiac prompt, we really should indicate the expected
> credentials... we already do special stuff in release/ for install
> media, my initial impression is that this shouldn't be all too hard.
> 
> 2. re: default shell and niceties: complete agreement, IMO we should
> at least have basically usable history at a minimum
> 
> 3. re: `pkg search xorg` -- that makes sense, given "pkg search xorg
> returns too many hits to fit on a single page of a text-mode console".
> Looking at sample output for that specific inquiry:
> 
> linux-c7-xorg-libs-7.7_8       Xorg libraries (Linux CentOS 7.7.1908)
> xorg-7.7_3                     X.Org complete distribution metaport
> xorg-apps-7.7_4                X.org apps meta-port
> xorg-cf-files-1.0.6            X.org cf files for use with imake builds
> xorg-dmx-1.20.8,1              Distributed Multihead X from X.Org
> xorg-docs-1.7.1,1              X.org documentation files
> 
There is a reason, why this is done like this, it is the historical output.

Changing it will break a lot of scripts, many choices in pkg has been made to be
as conservative as possible to avoid breaking things.

Best regards,
Bapt
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