New subject: [SLE] Installation glitches

24 Dec 2001

      Hi SuSE and folks,

I just wanted to air some mild critcism regarding the installation of
SuSE.
It's still my favorite distro, but losing ground, mainly w.r.t. to the
installation.

I bought SuSE 7.1 pro, so this time round I decided to install via FTP
(4 systems). In total I pulled about 4 GB over the net, as opposed to
the 2GB if SuSE made disks 1-3 available as ISOs.  Not to talk about the
glitches on their FTP server they had when I tried first.

Why on earth is the install insisting on the IP address to ftp from
_after_ I set everything up via DHCP and even giving it a name server?

Why on earth does the first file downloaded not exist, shows as an error
in red and then the install proceeds as if nothing happened?

Why would the disk geometry bios setting or cable select setting cause
the install to fail without anybody looking for this kind of trouble
_before_ it hurts?

Why doesn't the install remember the partion the system booted from
before?  All systems I installed were getting the windows boot partition
wrong (as default).  I (or it) even managed to get a syntax error in
lilo.  And I wound up with
an unbootable system on two occasions - fixed by simply rerunning lilo.

Why is the wheel mouse not detected properly?  It defaults to ps/2 while
it must be imps/2. It looks ok for a few seconds, but it's a sure fire
way into sax hell.

Why do we have yast and yast2, sax and sax2?  Soon to come yast3 and
sax3?  Don't they realize that these setup tools
need to be tied together (or even better unified) in a way such that Joe
user can make the right decision (or at least a safe one).

I am still waiting for a distro to present me with an intermediate level
of choice of rpms to install.
E.g. workstation->development->{C/C++,Java}->{Kernel,KDE}
or server->{firewall,mail,dns,dhcp}
or server->{apache,postgres,php}

Why would SuSE install SuSEFirewall by default? Or libsmi? [I use
SuSEFirewall2 and libsmi, but who ever wants these should have checked
the server->{firewall} or networking->{snmp} areas of functionality in
the first place.

Why would I care about ISDN by default?

As I said, not everybody gets hurt by all the problems, and many people
won't have any problems. SUSE is still a top distro
regarding choice of rpms, proper configuration and enterprise readiness,
including reasonable compatibility with RH.

But the installation could use some tweaking to say it mildly, for
SuSE's benefit and to make Linux a consumer OS.
I may be mistaken on several of the points I tried to make, so please
don't flame me on particular topics.
The overall message is for SuSE to take note and make the installation a
more pleasant experience - we want people over
50 not to die a sudden death because of unforseen complications during
the install.

  Martin

Installation glitches

Martin Schulz

gilson redrick

Tim Prince

Keith

gilson redrick

Keith

Brian Marr

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