Re: Thoughts on the installer (early)

[Arthur Korn <arthur@korn.ch>]

Hi

Thom May schrieb:
> With the now working release of gtkfb, and the soon to be
> release (hopefully) of curses gtk+, it seems to me that there is
> a good opportunity for a "nice" ie, newbie friendly, installer.

Why do you people have the idea that a graphical installer in
itself is more user friendly? Designing a good graphical (as in
coloured pixels, characters are graphical too, you know)
installer is a lot of work. At least with a framebuffer
installer one can reach many more people with a single frontend
than before with svgalib or similar hacks.

Further: what do you get from a graphical installer if the
underlying installation system is not finished and reliable?

I really don't get the point of a curses gtk+ frontend.  What
makes it better than the slang frontend?

Note I'm writing of frontends (for {c,}debconf), that's the way
to go now I think, everything else would be a waste of time.

> Using gtkfb for a graphical installer and curses gtk+ for a text
> installer would mean that the same code could be used for both
> methods, allowing for a consistent ui "look and feel".

( I wonder how curses gtk+ manages to be consistent with gtkfb
... libaa-style drawing? ;) )

> I realise that using gtkfb adds several more dependencies to the
> install software, not least is the need to have VESA

Use the vgafb on i386 ... it should work for even more video
hardware.

> framebuffer support compiled into the kernel, but i feel that it
> would be a relatively small sacrifice given the potential that a
> graphical installer has.

What's the "potential of a graphical installer" over eg the
slang one? The ability to show a debian swirl throughout the
entire installation?

My rationale: do it if you really want, but getting the new
installer done at all should really have priority now -- it was
said before that not having an installer ready could get into
the way of woody releasing soon.

BTW: dbootstrap sucks over 9600 serial console ...

ciao, 2ri
-- 
The computer revolution is over. The computers won.