Enterprise Software

The old and new of BSD installers

By · January 17, 2012, 12:46 PM PST · dobes

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  • During the past week, FreeBSD has hit its 9.0 release and PC-BSD followed soon after with its FreeBSD-based 9.0 release.

    FreeBSD takes the tried and tested method of having a text-based installer. Although this release contained a new installer called bsdinstall, it is very similar to the older sysinstall process.

    This will be the only time I will say that I prefer the FreeBSD install to the PC-BSD installer, but ASCII art Beastie is a winner over PC-BSD's boot screen that follows.

    Screenshots: Chris Duckett/TechRepublic
    Captions: Chris Duckett/TechRepublic
     

  • PC-BSD boot loader

    The lack of ASCII art makes the PC-BSD installation media boot loader much less interesting. But this is remedied once the installation is complete.

  • FreeBSD installer welcome

    Welcome to the FreeBSD text installer. I hope blue is a thing for you, because you are about to see a lot of it.

  • PC-BSD installer welcome

    By contrast, the PC-BSD installer shows a beautiful X-based process. This is still BSD, but not as you remember it.

  • PC-BSD or FreeBSD?

    Here's an added bonus from PC-BSD. Since it is FreeBSD based, there is no trouble to installing FreeBSD server from the same installation media.

  • This is how FreeBSD displays which distribution components to install.

  • By contrast, PC-BSD presents it in a better manner (oddly reminiscent of old Linux installers) and provides much more software to install. Installing an X server and desktop environment must be completed post-installation with FreeBSD.

  • It's blue, again.

  • PC-BSD allows a selection of ZFS filesystem.

  • FreeBSD allows a selection of which services to start from within the installer.

  • PC-BSD moves user creation into the installer, and it's not bad except for the fact that the installer demands a Full Name of the user.

  • Text installer or not, watching a progress bar slowly tick over is boring in anyone's language.

  • Despite the pretty colours, watching a graphical progress bar is equally boring.

During the past week, FreeBSD has hit its 9.0 release and PC-BSD followed soon after with its FreeBSD-based 9.0 release.

FreeBSD takes the tried and tested method of having a text-based installer. Although this release contained a new installer called bsdinstall, it is very similar to the older sysinstall process.

This will be the only time I will say that I prefer the FreeBSD install to the PC-BSD installer, but ASCII art Beastie is a winner over PC-BSD's boot screen that follows.

Screenshots: Chris Duckett/TechRepublic
Captions: Chris Duckett/TechRepublic
 

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