Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> writes:
> So, what impact does having blends-tasks have besides wasting disk
> space.
> It adds tasks to the installer menu. Are those tasks we want on all
> system installs or not?
> If this is purely about disk space, I think it's less of an issue than
> if it provides a bad user experience.
It makes the "what do you want to install?" menu slightly worse by
introducing some more befuddling options to it. It was already dire
though.
Before this you'd be confronted with (I'll type the text version, so
people don't need to follow links to screenshots -- please forgive
typos):
[x] Debian Desktop Environment
[ ] ... Gnome
[ ] ... Xfce
[ ] ... KDE
[ ] ... Cinnamon
[ ] ... MATE
[ ] ... LXDE
[ ] ... LXQt
[ ] web server
[x] print server
[ ] SSH server
[x] standard system utilities
So, this was already a disaster area:
What does selecting Debian Desktop Environment, but none of the
desktops do (it gives you Gnome, but there's no real hint here)
How about if you deselect Debian Desktop Environment, and select Gnome
and KDE? (the desktop tasks all depend on task-desktop, so you get it
anyway AFAIK, but that's not the impression given).
What is a print server? (CUPS) web server? (apache2)
What do you get if you install without the standard system utilities,
does that still hold if you install a full desktop?
Are we really expecting the people that we feel we must protect from
package names by hiding the fact that we're talking about CUPS and
Apache to know what LXQt is?
After adding the blends, that becomes this (having just used the daily
mini.iso downloaded this morning):
[x] Debian Desktop Environment
[ ] ... Gnome
[ ] ... Xfce
[ ] ... KDE
[ ] ... Cinnamon
[ ] ... MATE
[ ] ... LXDE
[ ] ... LXQt
[ ] web server
[x] print server
[ ] SSH server
[x] standard system utilities
[ ] Special tasks
[ ] ... astronomy (Debian Astro)
[ ] ... games and fun (Debian Games)
[ ] ... life sciences and medicine (Debian Med)
so that then prompts one to wonder:
what the hell is "Special tasks" and what will I get if I select it?
Do I need to select that to get Debian Med, say?
(no, it's just an empty header AFAIK)
it also buries the 'standard system utilities' item in the middle of
the list, where it makes even less sense than it did at the end.
So, I'd say that the whole thing was a car-crash anyway, and this just
dropped a cigarette in the spilling petrol.
The real problem is that there's not been the effort available in the
d-i team to come up with some better way of presenting the question.
Cheers, Phil.
--
|)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature