Re: bad press at www.linuxworld.com
On Thu, Sep 14, 2000 at 08:17:53AM -0400, Dale Scheetz wrote:
> 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
> 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
Have you never seen a bad CDrom? Or how about the credit card install CD
images that were floating around?(I'm going to make my own as soon as I get
the media) How about just a slow CDrom? Or one that spins down after every
access? Finding /instmnt/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current could
take quite some time in those situations. What if you want to skip potato
and install a current woody base a friend of yours put together?
> 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!
Try running find on a Debian CD and see if you like the results first.
Then try it on an aging 4x drive. Then a 2x with barly any life in it.
> 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.
Hence the "It doesn't work yet, thank you for helping us try to fix it"
messages at the top of the accompianing documentation.
> 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 or out of date machine, just think SIMPLER IS BETTER.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.
Automation and mind reading are both extreamly complicated. There's a
reason windows is huge, and that you can't install mandrake without a CD.
Not everybody who wants to run Debian cares to put out the extra expance
to get their systems up to your standards. Most of the Debian installs I do
for people at LUG meetings would be much more difficult, if even posible if
the Debian install made all sorts of brand-new x86 assumptions.
Ever TFTP booted a Debian install? NFSroot'd? How about the
traditional(and recomended) three floppies to the net install?
- Nick Lopez
kimo_sabe@atdot.org
--
Just stand up to be counted.
I'm holding up one finger to make it easier.
- spotted on /. RE: MS suing Andover
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