Bug#1043226: debian-installer: Please consider moving root user setup to expert install, or change text

[Luna Jernberg <droidbittin@gmail.com>]

I agree, this was talked on in two podcast this and last month,
Distrohoppers Digest from July and Linux Userspace from yesterday in
August

Den mån 7 aug. 2023 kl 18:27 skrev Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org>:
>
> Source: debian-installer
> Version: 20230607+deb12u1
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> When setting up users and passwords in debian-installer in a default install,
> it prompts a user to set up a root password. In d-i, this works very different
> than in other installers, which causes quite a bit of confusion for users.
>
> Firstly, the instructions start off with "You need to set a password for
> 'root'", followed by seemingly uninteresting text about what a good password
> should be, which makes it incredibly easy for users to miss the part that sudo
> won't be set up for the first user.
>
> So, many users, and especially newcomers to Debian, follow the instructions in the
> first line and are then surprised when they can't use sudo from their user from
> their newly installed system.
>
> Would it perhaps make more sense to move the root password setup to the expert
> install d-i preseed entirely? Since this is likely only something that expert
> users would require in the first place? Either that, or move the explanation
> of what happens upward so that it's more prominent and not so easy to miss. In
> the latter case, it might also be worth while changing the first line that says
> "you need to..." so that user won't feel compelled to immediately start typing
> a root password and click on next.
>
> Thank you for considering,
>
> -Jonathan
>