A long, long time ago I proposed changing the main menu into a kind of list of settings like this. Language: English Location: United States Network: autoconfigure Disk: autopartition entire disk (hda1) Users: root, joey Software: desktop, print-server Grub: install to MBR, no other OS Finish installation Select a menu item to configure it, thereby running the menu item at medium priority, or skip over it if the default setting looks good (and skipped over menu items would run noninteractively at high[1] priority as needed to satisfy dependencies). Once you have such a menu, it's easy to add things to it, without them getting in the way unduely. As long as there arn't *too* many. Language: English Location: United States Mouse: PS/2 Theme: foo Network: autoconfigure Disk: hda1, autopartition entire disk Users: root, joey Software: desktop Grub: no other OS Finish installation Expert mode: disabled Rescue mode: disabled Of course, submenus could also conceivably branch off of this. Frans Pop wrote: > Overview of potential settings > ------------------------------ > * General > - show expert questions (in "early") > - debconf priority (in "menu") > - rescue mode (in "early/additional") > - frontend theme > - mouse support (device/protocol/left-handed) (in "early/menu") Having these things in a submenu makes sense, I think, both in the current installer, and in the context of the above wild idea. > * Hardware support > - SATA RAID > - multipath > - PCMCIA support (could help avoid asking multiple times!) > * Networking > - PPPoE support (in "early") > - type of configuration (none/static/dhcp) > - allow unauthenticated (?) > * Installed system > - use SUDO instead of root account > - create first user > * Debian settings (or Package management) > - use security (?) > - use volatile (?) > - use contrib (?) > - use non-free (?) > * Advanced > - keep regular virtual consoles (sercon installs) > - eject CD > - halt/poweroff system instead of reboot I'm not convinced that it makes sense to have a menu with these things on it, rather than just asking the questions at relevant times with appropriate priorities. To what extent are the problems this is trying to solve due to us having gotten into the bad habit of adding debconf settings but never actually displaying a question for them? It can be annoying to have to go through the installation at low priority to be able to answer a single low-priority question, but this menu does not, and cannot, contain every possible low-priority question, so it doesn't eliminate that annoyance entirely. And in cases of UI changes like these, it often makes sense to do the whole change, or no change; leaving things in a half-way state means added complexity. PS, why do we need to worry about which hand the mouse is configured for? AFAIK the GUI frontend only uses a single mouse button, so why not treat left and right clicks the same? -- see shy jo [1] This was before priority inflation.
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