> My background is as a longtime debian user and support volunteer in #debian. Thanks for doing that! I haven't been on that channel for a while, but I do remember what an incredible help you've been to many there :) Apologies for my harsh wording wrt auto-download. I shouldn't have have put my unfiltered first reaction onto the ML. > I think pabs's suggestion of improving the visibility of that choice on the > website instead [of in d-i] could improve user friendliness Fully agreed. When the user is visiting the DL page/section, they have a working PC (+browser) with a working network connection, which may not be the case within d-i. On a webpage it's also trivial to include hyperlinks to further reading. Here are some other suggestions (hopefully more constructive): I came to the DL page with my Debian machine ... for which I didn't need an installer, but for an other machine which (hypothetically) didn't have it yet. I think having a (prominent) first DL option is great: "Based on the machine you're currently running, we recommend this DL option for you" Below that a button labeled "Help me choose" which will start a 'wizard' to guide the user to select the appropriate download option for their use case. And below that a section "I want to choose myself" which presents the various options for which several suggestions have already been made. Another idea is to have a multi-platform client program like the RPi Imager program which helps the user select the right 'thing' for them and then writes that onto the appropriate device. Maybe this is only useful for SBC's, but could possibly be wider applicable. F.e. https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/arm64/daily/netboot/SD-card-images/ README.concatenateable_images is very clear and easy to do ... for a person like me. But I wouldn't be surprised if it is too complicated for a novice person (especially if also new to Linux). A Debian Imager client program could download the appropriate components, combine them (behind the scene) and writes it to the, by the user selected and in a friendly way presented, medium. HTH, Diederik
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