Re: bad press at www.linuxworld.com
On Thu, 14 Sep 2000, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> Well, I would be willing to agree with almost anyone who says that our
> install sucks. Almost every screen has some cryptic comment that makes
> sense to me, because I understand the context, but must be pure greek to
> anyone not so familiar.
Nothing to add to this statement.
> However, my biggest complaint has never been addressed as far as I can
> tell, and it is really hard to explain over the phone just why you are
> doing any of this:
>
> When installing from a CD, after picking the CD as the installation media,
> the install keeps asking you where to find the (rescue, drivers, or
> base) disks on your CD. None of these questions should ever be asked. I
> don't know whether you will find them in the default location or a list,
> and I certainly don't know how to specify it manually. The manual
> specification is even more problematical when the install scripts insist
> on tacking an additional path element to the one provided, and failing.
>
> Why should the user even be involved in any of these questions. It's on
> the CD. If the installation program doesn't find it in the
> "default" location (/instmnt/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current
> for the Intel install), then it should do a find on /instmnt, and only if
> it fails to find the desired files should it then tell the user that it
> can't find the desired files. Asking for the manual path to these files
> doesn't seem to be useful at all. If you can't find the files you need on
> the CD with find, then they just aren't there!
For sure, those questions are really strange!
For those 42 people in the world who want to be asked add a commandline
option at the boot prompt like
Do_I_should_ask_any_boring_questions_while_installing_which_everybody_else_dont_want_to_see=yes
If this option is set by the brave installer you might add a question:
Are you sure that you want the option
Do_I_should_ask_any_boring_questions_while_installing_which_everybody_else_dont_want_to_see
to be set to "yes" (Yes I'am/No/Don't know) : [No]
If the user dosn't type "Yes I'am" fall back to the default. May be
we should include a caracter to this string which isn't available on
a default keyboard. Of course this option should *not* be documented
anywhere!
> On all those other screens where an option is available for some archane
> or out of date machine, just think SIMPLER IS BETTER. Fitting the install
> to all the possible archaic machines in existance is a design of
> deminishing returns on invested efforts. KISS (Keep It Simple
> Stupid) should apply at every opportunity.
The SiteRock shaped CD is a fine example for a less question installation.
Take this as an example and add features for old/strange hardware via
boot-prompt options.
Kind regards
Andreas.
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