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Re: bad press at www.linuxworld.com



Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net> writes:

> Well, I would be willing to agree with almost anyone who says that our
> install sucks. Almost every screen has some cryptic comment that makes
> sense to me, because I understand the context, but must be pure greek to
> anyone not so familiar.

I would love for some good writers to get involved and help us improve
the dbootstrap messages.  There's only so much I can do...

> However, my biggest complaint has never been addressed as far as I can
> tell, and it is really hard to explain over the phone just why you are
> doing any of this:
> 
> When installing from a CD, after picking the CD as the installation media,
> the install keeps asking you where to find the (rescue, drivers, or
> base) disks on your CD. None of these questions should ever be
> asked.

I don't think it asks that anymore. I am not sure.  It shouldn't.  You
can try booting with the "quiet" option though.

> I don't know whether you will find them in the default location or a
> list, and I certainly don't know how to specify it manually. The
> manual specification is even more problematical when the install
> scripts insist on tacking an additional path element to the one
> provided, and failing.

Fixed in 2.2.17.

> Why should the user even be involved in any of these questions. It's on
> the CD. If the installation program doesn't find it in the
> "default" location (/instmnt/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current
> for the Intel install), then it should do a find on /instmnt, and only if
> it fails to find the desired files should it then tell the user that it
> can't find the desired files. Asking for the manual path to these files
> doesn't seem to be useful at all. If you can't find the files you need on
> the CD with find, then they just aren't there!

Um, doing a find on a NFS moount is problematic at best.  It kinda,
uh, will hang your machine for a while.  I think that's the reason
things happen that way.

> Needless to say, you could put them somewhere else, but then you shouldn't
> have chosen cdrom as the installation method for these files!
> 
> Anyway this is my current rant on boot disk issues. I've had to deal with
> several confused and frustrated users over this issue. It was even worse
> for one of the "pre-release stable" CDs where this feature didn't work no
> matter what you entered, and several people got "stuck" with these.

Have you filed a bug?   I welcome bugs, especially ones with well
thought-out constructive ideas.

> On all those other screens where an option is available for some archane
> or out of date machine, just think SIMPLER IS BETTER. Fitting the install
> to all the possible archaic machines in existance is a design of
> deminishing returns on invested efforts. KISS (Keep It Simple
> Stupid) should apply at every opportunity.

I think if you compare slink with woody I've done a pretty good job of
chopping out a lot of decision points which were confusing before.

-- 
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>



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