Stefan Hundhammer wrote:
On Tuesday 05 February 2008 15:30, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
you're right that the box is smaller than before but the manuals you're asking for are available as PDFs on the media. ...
They need to be presented to the new user at first boot up.
Well, no. Not only no, but "hell no!". ;-)
Put the crack pipe down.
That's the way we got all that annoying stuff you have to click away during installation and then at your first login. It always started like that: Some people not finding it right away (but OTOH also not giving it a real hard try).
So when do you propose to inform people who are NEW to SuSE (especially those who have just switched from Windows).... 5 months after installation???? This may be annoying for you, the experienced user, but it's not about YOU..it's about the INEXPERIENCED USER who is *lost*... doesn't know what the "man" command is, has never heard of "info" either, and seriously needs something BLATANTLY IN HIS FACE to show him where to go to find answers. To the newbie, that's not annoying, it's FRIENDLY.
Look at what stuff we already have that nobody (well, make that "very few", but usually "very few who have the authority to make us") wants to see. Let's take a small tour through current and recent releases we made - just a very random selection:
- License agreement at installation start. Yuck. But the lawyers demand it.
Because the law does.
There must be some old lady who once in the course of this universe couldn't find it right away and then died of sorrow or desparation. ;-)
You're saying that the license agreement should be queried AFTER installation?
- Media check. Come on. My CD / DVD buring software can do that a lot better, and at a much more appropriate time.
When it comes to detecting errors on an installation disk, which "much more appropriate time" do you mean, precisely? I certainly do NOT want to waste *MY* time going through the software selections (which usually takes me about 2 hours) only to find out AFTER the installation that there are detectable errors on the installation media. Sure it takes time.. SO WHAT? I want to know IMMEDIATELY if there is an error on that DVD *BEFORE* I waste a bunch of time going through all the steps of doing an installation. And if I already know that the DVD is good, I can just *SKIP* the media check by clicking "no" to the question of whether I want to check the media or not.
- Time zone selection. Interesting for users who happen to install in Thai language on their way to Vladivostok, but just annoying for all those people whose location we can easily deduce from the language they selected. German, Czech, Swedish - time zone unique (unless they are on that train to Vladivostok, too). English is harder, agreed. Some other languages, too. But for most languages there is little question.
So when I was doing an English language installation while in Iraq, I'm just screwed, eh. Time zone selection takes minimal amount of time, and yes, it SHOULD be done at the beginning. Any other time is even less appropriate. English-language users are in a tremendous number of time zones - 6 or 7 in North America alone.
- Release notes. Well, I might be interested in them after I have my installation done and everything works as expected (including the good MPlayer etc.), but certainly not bang in the middle of all that.
I agree there. In fact, relevant release notes (i.e to that software which is actually installed) should all be linked into a directory (like /root/release-notes). The installer already knows where they are (that's how they're put up on the screen)...but frankly, they flash by too quickly to be useful. By the time I've seen them all, I barely remember 5% of what was shown.
- YaST control center. Yes, it's been a while, but we were made to force-press that thing upon the poor user at the end of the installation, too. It was broken for a long time, yet nobody complained. Must be quite some crowd out there using that thing. ;-)
I've noticed problems since 10.0. And instead of fixing it, you guys seem more interested in changing the appearance. Misplaced priority, if you ask me.
- Novell customer center (during registration). Well, marketing.
- SuSE greeter. Do we still have it? Well, I guess so - when you don't recycle an existing home directory. It also used to have no window title bar etc. so you really had to hunt that icon down to get rid of it. Gah, gimme a break.
/home should be on a separate partition by default, (and by default NOT re-formatted) so that /home is recycled
- KDE tip windows on startup on every program. WTF?! When I open a "konsole" (the KDE xterm) I don't want to be bothered with that stuff. I want to issue some commands, and probably not just for fun. Get that thing out of my face.
Then click "do not show me again" or whatever it is, and stop whining. That's what I did, and you can, too.
And now let's think again about documentation or anything else being force-pressed upon the user... ;-)
I cannot fathom your mindset, when it's the onus is on the vendor to make things easier for the newbie user.
CU
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