Pascal Bleser schrieb:
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).
Right. That's why we should emphasize as much of automatic partitioning as possible. Partitioning is something for experienced people but of course we have to find out a solution that also prevents Newbies from loosing their Windows and its data.
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 don't want to present the full-blown partitioner during the installation. Maybe we should offer a simple GUI (something like partition magic GUI or the paragon partitioner GUI) as a fallback for users who don't trust the auto-partitioner?
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..
Cool idea!
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).
I am afraid we have to take care of our decision not to preselect any desktop. Furthermore I don't think, that Newbies will enter an IRC channel :-) But it is an interesting concept though and I think we should just identify common newbie tasks and install the software needed for these tasks.
Present a choice of "installation modes" really soon (possibly right after choosing between "installation"/"upgrade"/"repair"),
I would really like to skip this dialog at all and to replace it with: * display update choice only when a previous openSUSE is detected * move repair into the boot screen
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")
We thought about that as well, but we decided to avoid this approach as it gives people a hard feeling having to rate themselves (like those stupid "... for Dummies" book series) and it might be difficult for the user to rate himself. We observed this during our usability tests, that people find it difficult to rate themselves even when the rating scale is explained in three lines :-)
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].
Fully agreed! I hope that we can start this discussion next week! Enjoy, Martin -- Martin Schmidkunz User Experience Specialist martin.schmidkunz@novell.com +49 (0) 911 740 53-346 ------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) ------------------------------------- Novell, Inc. SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10 Your Linux is ready http://www.novell.com/linux -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ux+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ux+help@opensuse.org