Improving installer?
Hello. I just installed the recent Debian 2.2. rev 2. The installation
failed because the installer tried to download packages from the web
even I had said no for web downloads.
Also, I need to update both kernel and X Window System to very latest
versions. The problem is that about 200 programs depends on the X.
It might happen I have to recompile all those programs myself. Therefore,
is it possible to modify the Debian installer to recompile the needed
packages?
Now to the basic installer. You could make the sound module installation
more clear: now there are plenty of sound modules in misc section. It is
also difficult to see what is needed when only Alsa is installed. You could
have a separate "sound driver" menu containing text:
Alsa drivers are not available here but they can be installed
later. OSS drivers are available now because they are part of
the kernel.
<install Alsa sound driver modules later>
<install OSS drivers now>
Alsa subsection would give menu:
sound core
(or whatever is needed for Alsa, if any, I don't know)
OSS subsection would list the sound core and all OSS driver modules.
I feel this kind of arrangement would make the sound installer much
simpler and obvious.
Further, the installer formats the e2fs disk with 5% reserved for the
root. 5% of gigabytes is a way too much. It is also waste of space
in my use. While you have good advices about this topic I suggest
a following compromize: please let the user select some reasonable value
for the reserved space in Mbytes. Installer could have a list of
appropriate values (including 0) and/or a number input field.
The default value could be some safe value. I wonder if the percents
of the disk size is a good unit at all --- I have feeling it could be
the file sizes which counts...
Now I changed the reserved space by going to shell from installer, and
performed:
% umount /target
% mke2fs -v -m 0 /dev/hda6
% mount -t ext2 /dev/hda6 /target
Because mke2fs seems to not offer option for setting the reserved
space in bytes, I had no other choise than use "-m 0". Earlier I used
tune2fs to change the reserved space but that was even more trickier
because the rescue CD has no tune2fs.
The installer had other confusing points:
-It asks for the Debian CD but I have 6 CDs in total
-Archive path selection was confusing
-Installation of module "lp" failed
-Installer didn't warn what happens when the hard disk is made
bootable to Linux: user cannot boot to MS Windows without being
a Lilo expert
Suggestion: the installer could allow user to set the initial Lilo boot
choises. Here is the initial dialog:
1 Linux
<add new boot choise> <done>
The Linux is placed automatically because the installer knows where
the boot image locates.
When a new choise is added, it asks for a name ("Windows") and the
device. Installer could offer a list of partitions and their
filesystems from which user could select one. After typing all OS
choises in, the display would look like this:
1 Linux
2 Windows /dev/hda1
3 Windows 2000 /dev/hdb1
The installer could print the above final list to "/boot/bootmess.txt".
The example Lilo config file has an old Linux image as a second
choise. I suggest that only one Linux boot choise is installed
by the Debian installer. Others can be added later in Linux.
If one wants to install another Linux to the same computer,
then the installer could go and look the lilo.conf of the other
Linux. That could be a standard procedure of installers of all
Linux distributions.
I feel getting the boot menu working as displayed above would help a lot
the users (expert or not).
Best regards,
Juhana
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