On Sat, 15 Sep 2012 04:36:36 -0700, Weaver wrote: > Greetings, > > Newbie Installation of Debian Squeeze 6.0.5 i386 Netinstall disc.
IMO, newbies should go for CD or DVD installation disc instead. > We have a fairly typical, hand-me-down box, P4, 2.8 GH, 2 GB of RAM, > with two Debian installs already in situ on sda. The empty sdb, 120 GB > ATA, will be used for the install: (...) > Partitioning: Entire disc selected. Separate /home selected. > In my opinion, the third option of separate /usr, /var, /tmp/ /home here > are wasted, as anybody that is going for that sort of option set are > probably going to go for the more fine-grained approach the 'Expert > Install' option caters to. Hard disk partitioning is a delicated task that cannot be easily un-done afterwards without pain so having a fair default (separate "/home") and additional options is fine with me, even for newbies. > Computed Partitions. > > / = 10 GB – Bootable ext3 – I would probably go for a little more than > this, because the newbie appetite wants to try out everything! koffice, > libreoffice, calligra, gnomeoffice along with gnumeric and abiword to > see what they look like and make a preferred selection. Likewise with > every single video player, music player, browser and mail client. > They'll pare everything down after the first six months when decisions > are made, but they need plenty of room initially. I'd be looking at at > least 12.5 GB. Worked out on the percentage of drive space, of course. 10 GiB is very scarce for today defaults. I would add more room here. > /swap = 4.1 GB which fits nicely with the 2 GB of RAM. I will use a 3 GiB partition. > /home =105.9 GB ext3. IMO, too much space for /home. I would split the remaining space for "/ home" and "/". > I wondered at ext3 being the default, instead of ext4, but that may well > be just the time slot that squeeze fitted into. At the time Squeeze was released, ext3 was a sensible default, indeed. > Finish Partitioning and Write to Disc > > At the top is an annotation which says: > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “This is an overview of your > currently configured partitions and mountpoints. Select a partition to > modify its settings (filesystem, mountpoint, etc.), a free space to > create partitions, or a device to initiate its partition table.” > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > This is beyond Double-Dutch to a newbie. If you said 'mountpoint' to > your > average newbie, he would be looking round for the horse. Likewise with > 'partition' (office furniture) and 'filesystem' (the technique required > to get out of jail when they catch him, now that he has his hands on > some 'real' hacker software). You are being too much protective. A linux user (newbie or not) should know what these terms are or at least, have a bare idea of their meaning. > When you need to relay some information to somebody, you need to make an > accurate assessment of the communication level of your audience. > Otherwise, you simply don't communicate. If they aren't in front of you > in order to do this, you assume no knowledge and operate from that > 'mountpoint'. Hidding too much information can be as bad as displaying all the data. > Here's an example – rough, not at all polished: (...) In my experience, people do not tend to read much at the installation screen neither this is a good place where to stay for too long. Too much text can make the user to doubt and the installation wizard cannot be a replacement for a good manual such the Relase Notes and Installation Guide. > So, onward we go.... (...) > Popularity Contest = Yes. There's more explanation here than there is > for partitioning. I would remove this option. > Graphical desktop Environment = Yes (...) I will add a warning here about the time it can take to download the full DE so the installation process can be delayed noticeabily. > There might, from a newbie perspective, need to be a short note at the > proxy configure stage. What's a proxy? Come on... if they are currently browsing the web and getting e-mails in their inbox they should already know what a proxy is. > But from what I can see, the only major bulwark to a more substantial > user uptake is the clarification of partitioning. The installer has now > reached the stage where everything else is pretty much self-explanatory. I will avoid a verbose installer. Debian people has done a marvelous work with thteir documentation and this step (Partitioning) is very well explained there¹ (even it has a separate Appendix!). ¹http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s03.html.en#di-partition Greetings, -- Camaleón -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/k3261n$200$5...@ger.gmane.org
