Keith Mitchell wrote: >> >> In my opinion, the text installer should: >> >> - work on both x86 and sparc >> - offer a similar installation experience and feature set as the >> existing slim GUI installer > Should it offer a similar installation experience? What does this > mean? Is the target audience for the text installer the same as the > target audience for the GUI installer (I would say that it's not). In > that case, the experience - and feature set - should be tailored to > the text installer's anticipated user base. For me, a "similar installation experience" means similar questions will be asked. Same things can be configured/selected during installation. Not more, not less.
I agree that the text installer's anticipated user base should be considered. So, let's talk about that. From what I can see, users that can benefit from using the text installer are: - all sparc users, since AI is the only way to install SPARC machine at this time. - All x86 users who can not use the GUI installer now, because their machine doesn't have enough memory to run GNOME, or because their machine can't use the window system..etc.. Based on the above user groups, I don't see why we need a different feature set for the text installer. Offering the same feature set would provide the same installation experience, and we can re-use a lot of existing code. >> - the installation performance shouldn't defer too much from the GUI >> installer. (ie: if it >> takes 20 minutes to install via GUI, it should take about the same >> amount of time to install >> via the text installer) > Can we define "same amount of time"? Would that be within 10%? No more > than twice as long? Does installation time include the time the user > spends selecting options, or just the time spent moving bits? I guess this point is kinda covered in the "user experience" point above. I think the questions to be answered should be similar and the amount of time spent on moving bits should be similar. This is assuming we provide the same feature set for both installers. If they have different feature sets, probably doesn't make sense to impose this requirement. --Karen
