El lun, 08-11-2021 a las 11:04 +0100, shundhammer escribió:
Hi all,
As long as it scrolls by very fast, you don't need to bother about it.
But some packages take forever, and that's when I get interested in what is happening:
- Did I really want to install LaTeX that is now generating a ton of fonts? Or do I want to be careful next time to avoid anything that will drag that package in; and consume a ton of disk space, too?
Actually, I am not sure whether the installation progress is the right place to find out that LaTeX is taking a ton of disk space.
- Something that downloads files from an external site in its post-install script might be stuck. Maybe I can do something about that; or simply the knowledge that this is what keeps me waiting may be important.
I do not think there is anything you can do to speed up things at that point. IMHO, that information is not relevant at all.
etc. etc.; we always made the claim that we put the user in charge, so we should clearly give him the information he needs to make decisions, or to do things immediately.
With this approach, we are dumbing him down to a pure consumer who doesn't get to decide anything; he has to accept whatever we do to that machine. This is not the Linux way. This was never the YaST way. Why are we choosing this route?
Empower the user, don't treat him as somebody powerless.
Sorry, but I do not think we are treating the user in that way by simplyfing the feedback screen. [..]
It might be a good OPTION to read them at this point. But if I am interested in them, I want to take my time, and I want to be able to keep an editor window open in parallel to take notes; or a terminal window to experiment with things, to have a look at the mentioned config files, to read the latest man page of that command. Package installation is not the right time for that; at least for me it isn't.
IMHO, displaying information about the product you are installing is rather useful. I usually read release notes, even when I am going to upgrade my desktop system. But, sure, it is an option. You can just ignore them and read them later (or before). But showing the release notes will not harm any user. However, if we can use the same screen space to do something better... [..]
The remaining time was always a lie. I told you the story of that "pessimistic factor" several times already; that non-feature was demanded by the product manager back then. It was never a reasonable estimation; that fact is hidden only by constantly recalculating the expected remaining time, and constantly reducing the "pessimistic factor" from initially 2.0 to 1.0 when we get near the end. Anybody watching closely will observe that the times are jumping wildly, especially when packages are involved that perform lengthy actions in their post-install script.
Those times are wrong. They always were. They always will be. It may average out in the end because it's a lot of packages, so inaccuracies may not become too obvious in most cases. But we are basically making up the numbers that we display to the user.
OK, not a problem, let's keep them out.
Yes, please, let's get rid of it.
One thing that we agree upon. That's good. ;-)
Thinking a little bit further, would it make sense to unify the packages installation progress and the finish clients screen into a single one?
No. That would be a bad UI experience; right now you can look from far away to get an impression how far the installation progressed. With a unified dialog, you'd have to carefully read the text. That would be a change for the worse.
Sorry, but I do not think so. Now we have two different UIs: one about software installation (the slideshow itself) and the other about the rest of things that happen *after* installing the software. IMHO, if we simplify the slideshow, that difference becomes somehow artificial. You are installing the system and installing the software is just another step. If we define a clear UI to track the installation progress, you do not need to separate both phases. Having said that, we are not aiming to unify both screens now. We are mainly focused into simplifying the slideshow.
Kind regards
Regards, Imo -- Imobach González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE LLC https://imobachgs.github.io/