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Re: free choice in installer?



On 10/11/14 10:15, Michael Ole Olsen wrote:
> If there was a choice in the installer for Init system
> and boot loader there would be nobody complaining.

If I had to choose an init system and a boot loader during the normal
installation flow, I'd complain. Options have a cost, forcing a user to
answer a question before they can continue (whether they know or care
about the answer or not) has a higher cost, and I think one of the major
improvements in debian-installer (and package installation in general)
since I started using Debian is that it asks *fewer* questions.

If you have sufficiently specialized requirements that our recommended
default is unsuitable, that's a good time to look into the "expert"
installer mode, pre-seeding, or installing with the default
init/bootloader/etc. and switching afterwards. For instance, for the
init side of things, I did some testing at the weekend which confirms that

    preseed/late_command="in-target apt-get install -y sysvinit-core"

does what you might expect.

> forced to use GUI desktop crap when they want a server (ubuntu)

I wouldn't use it myself, because I prefer Debian, but
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server does exist.

Installing servers with the standard installer and accidentally getting
a full GUI seems to be a common mistake for new Ubuntu users, and I
think Debian is right to present that choice as an option in the
installer rather than an entirely separate installation image, but I can
understand Ubuntu's point of view here.

    S


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