Re: Thought on the installer (early)
Hi
>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.
I didn't say userfriendly. I said "newbie friendly". The two things
aren't the same. The ability for a linux newbie to do an install is
severely (in my experience - YMMV) restricted by an inability to navigate
and use a non gui-front end.
I agree that if the installer is not done then having a graphical front
end is pointless, however I wasn't aware that waiting for the back end to
be totally done should impede the development of front ends ;)
To go with the rest of the email at speed -
GtkFB uses a standard framebuffer. it just gives you a well written
toolkit over that.
I've not yet looked at the slang frontend, i can't comment. I do however
think that using the same code for the two front ends _I was talking about_
would inevitably lead to a more consistant User Experience.
The potential is:
to provide a familiar environment for newbies coming from $OTHERDISTRO or MS.
to reduce the instance of people putting the cd, booting, taking one look at
the slang frontend they are hit with, and taking the cd out again. That is
my concern. While I like the current debian install system, the only other
installer i had used before it was slackwares. Having now seen RH7's effort
(i don't like it, everyone else in the company does, and they're all newbies
/windows users) i agree that ours needs a graphical option.
I have no intention of wishing to divert effort from getting the new
installer done, but I do think that if the installer has not had some serious
front end love, we'll be shooting ourselves in the foot somewhat.
-Thom
(please respect mail-followup-to, or cc me manually - not on the list :) )
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