[Precisionix-General] Re: Installer
- From: daaawg <cdaaawg@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: precisionix-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:46:52 -0700
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
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