Ars Technica article on FreeBSD new user experience

[John-Mark Gurney]

Kyle Evans wrote this message on Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 09:49 -0500:
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 1:12 AM John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:
> >
> > Kyle Evans wrote this message on Thu, Apr 09, 2020 at 14:34 -0500:
> > > 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:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > 2. re: default shell and niceties: complete agreement, IMO we should
> > > at least have basically usable history at a minimum
> >
> > Hmm...  I wonder if this is a terminal issue or something.  I do
> > remember /bin/sh not working w/ up/down arrow, but I just tried in
> > a jail, and up/down arrows work fine.  Also, I normally just "set -o vi"
> > using /bin/sh to give me vi keys in the shell and then it just works...
> >
> > Guess more exploration is needed of a fresh install to figure it out...
> 
> My memory here is incredibly hazy, it may be that I was scarred by
> history not persisting at all across sessions or something like this;
> I quickly installed zsh and never looked back.

Yeah, history isn't kept by default, not sure if there's an option to
keep it, if there is, I don't see it in the man page, and ctrl-r doesn't
work either.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."