Re: Bug#758116: Allow to select Blends selection during installation - just "DE", "Web server", "Mail server" is NOT enough

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Ole Streicher]
> In my opinion, the situation for the Debian Pure Blends is better here
> than for the Desktop environments: If a user doesn't know what the
> Blends mean, he just ignores it and doesn't install anything from it.

An unskilled user do not ignore options he do not understand, he worries
and tries to understand them in order to avoid making a mistake that
will bother him in the future.  If you believe options that are unknown
or confusing do not cause any harm, I am quite sure you are mistaken.
They increase the cognitive strain and force people to spend time trying
to understand that the option can be ignored.  They also slow down the
installation process.

Note, I am not against the blends selection option during installation,
but believe it should be introduced after taking the negative effects as
well as the positive effects into account, not by claiming the negative
effects do not exist.

There exist usability research indicating that more than 7 options will
confuse the human brain and cause a lot of cognitive strain.  To me it
tell us that we should avoid "just two screenfulls" of options, and
instead try to make sure at most one screenfull, and preferably less
than 7 options are presented in any dialog in the installer.

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen