[Precisionix-General] Re: Installer
- From: daaawg <cdaaawg@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: precisionix-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:18:31 -0700
With some caveats, I think a choice of desktop is a good idea.
Allowing that sort of choice for a total n00b would require some
non-technical explanation to help her make an intelligent decision.
Including the choices on the LiveCD (DVD?) would require space that might be
better used for application binaries. I think some screenshots of each
desktop and some apps on the website along with some text explaining the
design philosophy behind each choice would go a long way in clearing up any
confusion between desktop managers.
I think for the first go-round, the distro should be offered as separate
disks for each desktop offered. Maybe even give a choice of isos with the
Ubuntu-like installer for n00bs and the Debian installer for warriors. Not
familiar with fluendo, but definitely need some sort of assistant for
installing codecs that work with a chosen media player.
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 11:35 AM, Andrew Sorensen <aos@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yes, I think ubuntus installer is very easy --- but do we want to give
> users a choice of desktop durring install or not? As for partitioning,
> we can change that interface a little to make it easier and less buggy
> than the ubuntu one. fw-cutter is a poor driver, and would rarely give
> me more than 1Mb/s so I use ndiswrapper on that computer, and the free
> intel driver on my new laptop. We wont include DRM software or such in
> our distribution, maybe fluendo stuff and a codec assistant.
> On Sat, 2008-08-16 at 01:46 -0700, daaawg wrote:
> > As far as my experience with the install process:
> > I have many years supporting Windows systems professionally in
> > enterprise environments -- the install process for Ubuntu blew me away
> > -- very quick and painless. The only problem I had was making a
> > decision on how I should partition my drives. For a default choice, I
> > believe separate partitions for root and home are appropriate, of
> > course we would have to include a choice to leave any windoze
> > partition intact. For those choosing to set up custom partitions, a
> > simple statement explaining the sanity behind a separate partition for
> > the home directory would have saved me some time googling for an
> > answer to the question, "what makes a good linux partition scheme?"
> > The hardware detection was quite good, although my laptop sound does
> > not work :( even though it appears that the hardware was detected
> > properly. Wifi required the use of the fwcutter driver which worked
> > for about 10 minutes, at which point I googled the problem from
> > another computer, and installed the ndiswrapper for the broadcom
> > windows drivers. Of course, because of Ubuntu's philosophy, I had to
> > install non-free and/or proprietary codecs for dvd viewing. Some of
> > these problems are due to self-imposed constraints due to ideology,
> > some are due to legal issues such as DRM. Before any work is done to
> > build a distro, ground rules need to be set to cover these issues. If
> > it is going to be a distro that is crippled out of the box due to
> > legal/philosophical issues, then it should be made clear right away
> > why this is so, but it should be made as painless as possible to get
> > the software to make things work. I think Ubuntu did a good job on the
> > part of providing easy installation of the software pieces, but I was
> > pretty much in the dark as to why I had to jump through these hoops.
> > In summary, I think Ubuntu's install process is quite good and
> > deserves a close look.
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Andrew Sorensen <aos@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I think its time we make some important decisions about the
> > installer
> > process, since it will effect other aspects about what we do.
> > we dont have any set way we have to do this yet, the rest
> > needs to be
> > designed on a few questions...
> > here are some choices for package/install format:
> > 1)Livecd + squashfs (like ubuntu) the user boots a livecd, the
> > boot
> > process uses a squashfs on the cd as / tempfs, and boots. When
> > the user
> > installs the distro, the squashfs is uncompressed to the hard
> > disk, and
> > the installer program and unneeded things that were
> > uncompressed to disk
> > are removed, and the system config is setup..
> > advantages of this system are a fast install speed, cons are
> > that user
> > has to install everything from the squashfs, and remove what
> > they dont
> > need ;( (no choosing gnome vs kde here, unless you got another
> > cd...)
> >
> > 2)debian based installer (like debian-installer in debian)
> > this would simply install all the packages to the users target
> > system,
> > it will take much longer than the first install method,
> > however lets the
> > user choose just what they want to install.
> >
> > 3)some other setup (your ideas go here!)
> > if you know of a better way to do this, post here! if you got
> > some ideas
> > about making a new installer, post here as well!
> > I think with our mailing list you just gotta do Re: Installer
> > as subject
> > and precisionix-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx as mailto, and it will
> > take it as
> > a reply.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many',
> > and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.
> > - Larry Hardiman
> >
> >
>
>
>
--
The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the
word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.
- Larry Hardiman
Other related posts:
