Re: I can't beleive this
At 06:27 PM 3/12/99 -0800, George Bonser wrote:
>Look, people, I could make a Linux distribution JUST as easy as Windows to
>install if I build it like the Windows installation ... it goes on the
>first bootable partition, PERIOD, it does not allow multi-boot of other
>operating systems, AT ALL, I install the base OS in a set configuration
>(no partitioning, etc by the user during install) with a specific set of
>applications that the user has no control over. It will install quite
>nicely and the longest part is the reformat of the hard drive to remove
>that "alien" filesystem that it found living there.
Not being good enough to write the programme myself I still don't see why a
programme can't be written to automate the defrag. windows partition, add
an amount of free space (say 10% of overall disk capacity) and partition
and format the balance as 64Mb swap, everything else fs2. No questions asked.
George, I know you know that Windows _does_not_delete_ the "alien
filesystem" :)
>
>The problem comes in when you want to give control over the installation.
>The more control you give the more difficult it becomes because you HAVE
>to assume that the person with the control knows what to do with it.
>
Why not, then, for the initial installation remove the choices ? That is,
the dselect maintainers make their best judgement regarding MTA, MUA,
picture viewers, sound players, editors, etc... This choice should be
based solely on ease of use. eg. select ae rather than vi/emacs for the
initial editor. This way, at least, a fully functional system is present
immediately and without any knowledge whatsoever. All that needs to be
done then is give the new user to pointer to the other packages that are
available and all is well with the world.
As was mentioned by someone else, it is important that apparently pointless
questions are not asked. eg. Byte compiling makes it go faster. Do you
want to byte compile ? I genuinely don't know what byte compiling is, I
don't know what, if any, negatives there are to byte compiling and so
_every_time_ I will say "y". Leave those sort of questions for "expert
edition" of the installation script.
>Comparing the two operating system's installation procedure is apples and
>oranges. The closest you can come with a commercial OS is POSSIBLY OS/2
>... and you know what .... people complained that OS/2 was too difficult
>to install.
Never used OS/2 so can't comment but Steve Lamb makes a good point that no
matter what is done, someone, somewhere is going to want it to be easier.
My point is that I believe that Windows is a poorly implemented Very Good
Idea.
Ivan.
>
>
>
>
>--
>Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org <
/dev/null
>
>
>
Reply to: