Re: Desktop task broken on !(i386/powerpc)
Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Christian Perrier]
> > We're dealing here with a quite informal population of people wanting
> > to "easily" install Debian and indeed we're probably having hard times
> > in figuring out exactly what they might expect.
>
> Yes. And some of these do not want the congintive strain that options
> they do not understand will give them. All extra options and
> flexibility will scare some unskilled users away. I've seen untrained
> users stopp on the first screen on the woody installer (you know, the
> large text block explaining that all you need to do to continue is
> press [ENTER]), and sit down and read it for several minutes trying to
> understand what it said. For these, all extra options increase their
> confusion, and make them more insecure during the installation
> process.
For this target audience, a desktop-only install without seeing
tasksel seems to be the best option.
> For these, we should hide as much complexity and flexibility as
> possible.
Which wouldn't work well for more experienced people. The usual
answer for this problem is to provide different modes, like
standard/user defined/special. Currently we don't, which means
"Bob User" still sees some strange questions, while e.g. somebody
who got a static IP address from his network administrator has to
type in some strange kernel parameters.
I still think it would be better to ask this "mode" question up-front
instead of hiding it away, because it allows to make the rest of an
standard installation even simpler as it currently is. We can't do that
now because it would dumb down the installer too much for too many
people.
Thiemo
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