Fabian Fagerholm wrote: > Feedback is welcome, and I'm subscribed to debian-boot so please discuss > here. I'm trying to find time to arrange a few more tests within the > next month or so, so that I can see what other flaws emerge. Thanks for doing the testng (and please send our thanks to your tester). I really encourage you to do further testing using a CD to install; installing by booting a CDROM will work on the vast majority of hardware, including any hardware a true new user would be likely to have, and it is much less tortuous and error prone. I expect that your tester would have gotten to at least the base-config process if using a CD. By the way, if you do test with CDs, please use full-size CDs, and not the netinst CDs. I'd think it best to break out the individual points in your summary into bug reports on the right installer components, and here's some commentary to that end: step 2-9: (debian-installer) I'm a bit suprised to see the user going through all the help in such detail. This suggests that more online help later on would be a good thing. We're getting that in the new version of partman at least. It also suggests that we should somehow make more clear that you shouldn't need to read all that stuff unless you're curious, or something is going wrong, but I am not sure of how to accomplish that. step 10: (debian-installer) It should be possible to reword the prompt on the help screens to make clearer that enter boots the system. I'll see what I can do. step 11: (rootskel-floppy) I think you're too charitable; many new users would not like the linux boot text at all. Luckily it's only this in your face on an install from floppies; normally it flashes by and the installer loads in seconds. step 13: (languagechooser) It's a pity that she did not scroll down and find the fi_FI entry. I wonder if adding arrows to the scroll bar, or some other indication that there is more below would have helped her. step 17: (countrychooser) The fact that hitting enter on a continent returns to the menu is something I have always disliked, but I have no particularly better idea. step 18-19: (kbd-chooser) It's probably a bug that the keyboard selector did not default to Finnish here. step 20: (load-floppy) You're right, that needs to stress that now is the time to change the floppy. I'll see about fixing this. step 21: (anna) This mess has been on my list to fix for a while, but it's nontrivial. The retreivers need to be extended to have failure handling capabilities, instead of this generic handler; the failure handler for the floppy should re-prompt for the floppy if none was found. step 22-30: (main-menu) I've seen users get into this kind of confusion when something goes wrong and the priority is lowered. Short of avoiding ever letting things go that badly wrong (which is a noble goal, but perhaps unobtainable), it's hard to fix it. Note that none of this is shown to users unless something goes wrong. On your other comments: - I agree that cdebconf's multiselct box implementation is confusing. Luckily we have no multiselct lists in the standard install path (unless something goes wrong). I would like to see it easier to use, better key assignments or at least a help bar at the bottom. (cdebconf) - Some of your UI ideas are not particularly doable with the current simple queston and answer, cdebconf-based interface. Some of them can be approached in spirit, if not in actual UI. (cdebconf) - Your idea for presenting a list of information the installer needs (language, country, keyboard) is a good one, and it's similar to an earlier proposal I made, which would also include some other information prompted for later. Unfortunatly, it will be a lot of work to implement this, and I've put off working on my idea until after the first release. There is still time to do it, I think, if someone is interested. Plan for a good week's work. (main-menu) - Indeed we don't display the kernel modules screen on normal installs. We do display a progress bar that breifly mentions the modules that are being loaded; while this will contain terms that users are not familiar with, I think the overall thing is clear, they do not have to interact with it, and it's essential for debugging when a module freezes the machine. (hw-detect) As to your conclusions, I think that you're jumping to conclusions from one test with floppies. Out of our 300+ installation reports (and the many more users who have installed without reporting), I think there are a few that are from users nearly as novice as your tester, and succeeded. However, they all used CDROMs. I look forward to further tests. -- see shy jo
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