On 02/11/2017 09:13 PM, Fabian Vogt wrote:
Am Samstag, 11. Februar 2017, 13:34:45 CET schrieb Simon Lees:
On 02/11/2017 06:09 AM, Fabian Vogt wrote:
Hi,
In my opinion the role-based selection that SLE has does not fit openSUSE at all. Instead, I suggest keeping the current appearance and just change a few things:
I don't mind the role based selection I think its good and simple for new users, having said that,
If it behaves the same as the current way, calling it "role-based" is IMO just confusing.
Add screenshots: Large enough to be distinguishable. Also with a longer description next to it, to make the decision easier.
I agree there is probably room on that screen for nice screenshots and long descriptions.
No "other" selection: Instead make the view scrollable, the usual GNOME + KDE + Nothing triplet on top is visible by default. IMO that's more fair. Also, it makes it possible to add *all* desktops we currently ship in the official repos (which only makes sense for the NET install and for the DVD with online repos active).
No "Choose Patterns" button: Instead, "Minimal System" (always on the bottom, it's for experts) can be selected and the package selection edited later. Otherwise there are two ways of achieving the same result, which is IMO misleading.
For reference the Server role is a Minimal System (A minimal system for bare metal or a vm anyway as opposed to Minimal for containers) so in this case selecting the server role would give you what your asking for.
On the second "Other" page there could be a case for only showing the patterns in the "Graphical Environments" category (ie Desktops) in this case the Select Pattern wording could be changed to "Select Desktop". At the same time if all the patterns were listed there i'd probably pick my desktop of choice along with several others. Regardless of this decision it would also be nice if screenshots were shown here as well. I also think that a secondary page is the right place for this rather then a scrolling / semi hidden main page.
The main reason I suggested a scrolling view instead was to show everything on the same level. Having to click on a button which then opens a text-only packagemanager like view is not ideal and if opened a page that looks just like the previous one just with LXQt/Enlightenment/Xfce/... instead of KDE/GNOME/Server you can just merge them. Much easier for comparisions as well.
I think one of the specifications of the new design was to not overwhelm new users and also some desktops have more features / functionality and are easier to configure and setup then others and so for Leap at least we should be pointing beginner users to those while still making it not hard for other users to get the desktop they want if they know what it is. For tumbleweed on the other hand where we don't have new users i'd be ok with one page, other then the difference between leap and tumbleweed would cause more work for testing etc. I also don't see why it needs to be a text based page if we make the main page look nicer we could probably do the same for that one too, for now its just recycling the existing software selections page, I guess if someone has the time and effort that could change.
Add version information, if possible: Currently there is no easy way to get that information except looking at the packages directly or installing the system...
If you are interested in which version of openSUSE has a specific version of software you can always use software.opensuse.org without even having to boot the installer eg https://software.opensuse.org/package/vim, also the version on the DVD won't always be the same as the last maintenance update.
software.opensuse.org is sadly too buggy to use. It can also show the *exact* version that you get after clicking Next, whether it's from :Update, the main repo or even some other repos you added before the desktop selection.
Appart from once or twice when its been down entirely i've never had issues with it, atleast when just for using it to search for versions.
Cheers, Fabian
-- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B