Re: About that List?
On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 16:50, Peter Nuttall wrote:
> On Sunday 07 Dec 2003 5:47 pm, Luis M wrote:
<snip>
>
> I think the best installer for a desktop linux box would be a system that
> booted up off the cd into a desktop, let you play around with it for a couple
> of hours and then you could click an icon to install.
I agree. So at least knoppix already does this and modifying knoppix to
be more debian-ized than it already is, should be very simple. In other
words, removing those pesky -knoppix packages and all the extra software
non-desktop related (snort, knoppix terminal services, and the like).
> It would then present you with a list of what it thought your hardware was and
> what software would be needed to use it fully. so if you have a dvd drive you
> would get xine, a cdwriter you would get xroast, and so on and so forth. It
> would also load the correct kernel modules and produce a good XF86 config
> file.. Most importantly, it would tell you what was not working and where to
> find help.
Nice, especially to pick the most eye-candy software available to do a
task. For instance, in Gnome and KDE one can use Xine just fine, but
Totem integrates better in Gnome and it's just a front end for Xine.
Also, the interface is much simplified. Thus, if the user feels like
using Gnome, Totem will be installed automatically and Xine-ui removed.
The same should happen for other apps.
For the printing related stuff, the default should be to use CUPS and no
questions asked. Also, it should do a Mandrake-like configuration of the
printer based on auto-detection.
> it would then take you though partioning your hard drives and would show how
> much of your space in both MBs and as a percentage would go to linux. It
> would be able to resize NTFS and FAT so a person could keep an existing
> windows system.
Or offer a choice to reformat the drive and repartition in a simple way
for a desktop. About 4 to 5 partitions should be enough, while keeping a
huge $HOME (the rest of the drive after /usr ) and /usr (7GB?). That
will ensure that users can keep adding games and whatever they please
after installation ;-) After all, this is a desktop and people do play
games.
> It would then install a base system and what packages you had asked for and
> the packages it thought you should have.
And whatever it's not already in the CD should be transparently download
it as needed without asking for users -- or, just in case, give a choice
for Advanced installation where advanced users can fiddle with which
mirror and what flavor of Debian they want by default ( apt.conf ->
APT::Default-Release "unstable" || "testing" || "stable" ; )
<snip>
> One of the good points about linux is the fact it has proper perrmissions. Any
> desktop distro has to keep that, if nothing else but an anti-viris method, In
> fact, teaching some basic sysmin to new users is something that is not done
> all that well and should be done better. When I think of the number of times
> I shot my foot off when I started with linux, and all users must have such
> stories, then I think it is pretty important.
>
Valid point, however, maybe on first boot it can ask this question and
allow the user to either choose to know how to do this, or just ignore
it and all system services are off (by default. a la OpenBSD). Except of
course for the syslog daemons and a few others which might skip my mind
now. Whatever other service should listen only in lo (127.0.0.1) and
have sharing off by default (this goes for CUPS, X11, and whatever other
daemon).
> > 5. After reboot, congratulate the user for doing such a huge number of
> > steps all by him/herself! LOL
>
> after reboot give a fast tour of the differant pieces of software and what
> they do.
> <snip>
>
> > > What is your opionion ... If there is anyone reading this list ...
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > Florian
> > >
> > > --
> > > http://www.reichertnet.de
> >
> > I hope this starts a long thread of ideas...
> > I'm more than able and willing to help in building a solution like this.
>
> --
> Peter Nuttall peter@nuttall.ukfsn.org
--
----)(-----
Luis M
System Administrator/Web Developer
LatinoMixed.com
lemsx1@latinomixed.com
http://www.latinomixed.com/
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