Bug#846002: blends-tasks must not be priority:important (was Re: Bug#846002: Lowering severity)
]] Ole Streicher
> On 06.12.2016 10:37, Holger Levsen wrote:
> > And this *is* still pretty confusing, though admitly better than it was
> > half a year ago.
>
> The current implementation has a popcon of >5000, without a single
> complaint or confusion documented in the web within the last six months.
> This is at least *some* empirical evidence that it is not "pretty
> confusing", and again I would ask you to show any better empirical data
> here to support your own point.
It's confusing enough that when I've had engineers from a provider
install Debian for me, I have ended up with a desktop rather than server
installation. Should I have filed a bug about it? Maybe.
I think it would be better if we moved most of tasksel out of the
installer entirely and had an app store of some sort where applications
and blends could all be better presented with screenshots and
all. That's obviously out of scope for stretch, and it's not something
that the CTTE is going to do (if nothing else because you'd be far into
«detailed design work» territory). This would leave the installer with
a «Do you want a graphical UI and/or sshd?» as a question/questions,
rather than a list of tasks, some which make less sense today (CUPS) and
some which are cryptic (what's the difference between LXDE and
LXQt?).
Historically, for Debian-Edu, there were regular and thin client server
profiles, thin client installations and so on which are a bit more than
«install this set of packages», which is (AIUI) what most blends are
today, so integration into the installer was pretty important. I'm not
sure pure package set variants should live as part of the installer at
all. They're really easy to install later, and by adding extra steps to
the installer, we're making Debian harder to install for everybody, not
just those interested in the blends.
Again, I don't know how feasible it is to end up with a better design
for stretch, but I don't think the current design is particularly
scalable and should be replaced for buster.
(I realise this doesn't answer the question in the bug report, but those
are some related thoughts.)
--
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
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