[Petter Reinholdtsen] > I want a Debian installer for new Linux users. :-)
[Bob Proulx] > Since the current installer takes over the terminal and guides the > user through the installation, it seems to me that it does the same > job as other installers which happen to be graphical. But with one > difference. The Debian installer does not use the mouse but instead > uses the cursor keys and the enter key. I did not have mouse support or graphical UI in mind with my comment. It is important to have a colorful and friendly presentation, but I find the current b-f view just fine in this respect. > So I have to be specific and ask you is that specifically what you > think new Linux users need? Simpler questions and less questions. A new user have no idea how to partition a hard drive. He should get help on how to do it, both which partitions to create, and how large they need to be. A new user do not care about the difference between keyboard layout, installation language and time zone. He want to let the system know his location, and get the rest automatically. A new user do not know if he want MD5 passwords. A new user do not know details about the content of his computer, and should get everything (including sound and X configuration) automatically detected and configured. A new user care about the install time of the system. At the moment it takes more then an hour to install the first Debian CD on my test machine. A RedHat install on a less powerful machine took 20 minutes two years ago. Both installed from one CD. I suspect reparsing the dpkg/debconf/apt database is slowing down the second stage installer. A new user are confused about the 'insert CD' prompt when installing from CD. This is simple to fix, but no one have done it yet. The main problem is that the prompt is a block with 4 lines of text, and ends in a question split like "press en\nter". It took a while before I discovered that this was a question, and I've seen several new users get confused the same way I was. > I would divide what the new user thinks of as the installer up into > parts. The installer. The tasksel/dselect package selection step. > The debconf and non-debconf configuration step. Let's talk about > them individually. Well, I would split it into two parts, the first stage and the second stage. The first stage is your 'installer' (normally refereed to as boot-floppies), running until the first reboot from hard disk. The second stage is base-config which runs tasksel, dselect/aptitude and installs the packages. Both need a lot of work. The second part needs to handle 'retry', to let the user go back to previous questions and try again. > Packages which do not use debconf have left users with bad experiences > as well. Still someone missing. exim, dpkg and ispell comes to mind. At least someone is working on a fix for ispell... > Finally the CD package distribution is not so nice yet. I often see > people say that CD #1 is all that 99% of the population needs. But > having done a CD installation in the last week I disagree. Currently making my own Debian-based distribution, I agree on this one. But this has improved a lot in the last few months. Did you try to raise your voice on the debian-cd mailing list, where this is being addressed? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]