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).
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 completely agree with above. My idea of taking care of this "partitioning" step User Friendly will be a "visual" environment and drag & drop. Also going with my concept of "Default Option" and "Expert Override", I will see it like this: 1: "Partitioning" step provides me with 2 Bar charts: a. Current b. Suggested where YaST lay out a default partition plan (root, swap etc) even with file systems specified (lets say most stable and common one of preference. We need to remember its not about which FS is superior. Here we need a newbie to get started with something that works stable. Lever it for experts to override). Drag will let me resize the partition. Right mouse menu for create, delete, Expert settings (Where geeks rule). Resizing Windows Zone (I am sure there will be one :P) will cause Warning to be prompted and asked to confirm (Not sure if I can actually resize from YasT. I heard I can, but never had the courage to touch it). My aim is that to have a page where I will be able to pass it with just accepting it but yet I see a graphical picture of what is going on.
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).
This one I like. Not because I think it has any specific advantage over the other choices but just because it aligns the installation concept with how "large number" of PC users (Yeah hate to admit but its Windows users) think how a OS installation goes. OS + basic set of packages sounds good. Also aligning it to the Software Portal / Application manager, it works well to. Once I do my first boot into my desktop, its time for me to give a visit to Software Portal and do the shopping. I already feel at home :P
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].
With this one, a bit of disagreement. Instead of forking the path from the start, I will love to have it "Default Option" with "Expert override" (which is visually present in the screen) along every step. My idea is this will give a learning / growing / curious mind to explore the options along the way and initiate learning (which eventually makes you a geek). So it will be like i explore the expert settings choices, since i don't know anything I go along with Default choices but then I know there are some things that I might learn and improvise my next installation. Also I guess its usually very hard to make profiles such as "Intermediate". I think it will be hard to differentiate between "Intermediate" choices vs "Expert Choices" I am planning to write a "review" thing with my ideas/imaginations. Planning to have some mockups. Few things I want to ask: 1. Running the imagination will with GUI is easy but how do we keep the text version of the installation in sync with that. Or we don't_want / avoid that? 2. Can we have multi-threading code on the YaST installer? Cheers, Mohammad -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ux+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ux+help@opensuse.org