-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jyllian Marie Thibodeau wrote: [...]
One idea for a compromise I came up with would be a screen at the beginning of the install, with a series of checkboxes to choose those components that you wanted to use during the install. These components can range from "Tweak Hardware", or "Install Additional Packages" to "Set Theme" -- and, short of a disaster, only those options which are selected will be presented to the user. For a custom install option, we could even have some of the more likely ones pre-selected."
But one can hardly skip the partitioning step. I do believe that just screwing the person's windows partition is worse than presenting a partitioning window. OTOH, problem is that configuring the partitioner is a highly technical task (in the scope of the audience you're targeting), most probably don't really know what partitions and filesystems are in the first place (they just know about the stone age C:, D:, ... - at best). Not sure the current automatic partitioning options do the trick. I somehow have the feeling there should be something in-between. Giving options such as choosing between ext3 and reiserfs, or creating a swap or not, is definitely a bad idea (just go for ext3, even if it's often worse than reiserfs, and don't create a swap at all if memory is
=1GB). Most Windows users have a cracked copy of Partition Magic though, so having a GUI where they can drag the partition sizes (without having to jump through hoops to select the partition type, the filesystem type, filesystem options, etc...) should make most of them feel at home (sort of).
I really wonder whether partitioning with Logical Volumes shouldn't be
the default. It definitely helps a lot once the user lacks disk space
and wants to give his SUSE some more. Typically, most Windows converts
will dual-boot and have no idea at all on how much disk space they need
for Linux. More specifically, they're used to Windows, which is just
totally different (installation is minimal, barely any applications
installed, and then most apps take huge amounts of disk space).
IIRC (been a while I did a fresh install) the partitioning comes before
the software selection. Maybe the opposite would be more appropriate, as
the partitioner would know how much disk space is needed in order to
install the packages and/or patterns the user has selected (+ some more
space, depending on what can be resized). Not necessarily trivial to
determine an algorithm here but well..
Furthermore, maybe the package/pattern selection could be skipped
altogether in "newbie mode" -- just install KDE, firefox + thunderbird,
an IRC client (with a .desktop on the.. Desktop to connect to #suse on
irc.freenode.net to get interactive help from the community), and
possibly OpenOffice.org (although even that should be skipped once we
have a decent and easy to use interface to install stuff).
Present a choice of "installation modes" really soon (possibly right
after choosing between "installation"/"upgrade"/"repair"), with no more
than 3 options, explain those options in the selection screen and have
different workflows depending on that.
[x] Linux newcomer (mmmh.. needs a better denomination)
[ ] Intermediate
[ ] Expert
?
(and explain what configuration operations will be available for each
"mode")
Clearly, the less options, the better.
And installing packages later on is a non-issue on Linux anyway.
It's just that openSUSE+SLED need an interface that's easier to use [to
install packages].
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
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