This should become a bigger discussion perhaps. As my comrades know I'm not happy with the state of the Parabola installer itself, and while in the channel I toe the party line, if people ask me privately I give them this advice:
1) use arch net installer (which works, easily) 2) use migration script We need to come up with easy to follow steps with a good installer or pragmatically provide a way to move from unfree to mostly free to free. CER On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 11:30:41PM -0500, Daniel Clark wrote: > So I think the people who have parabola installed probably used the > gNewSense installer or got a yeeloong pre-installed with gNewSense from my > company. Unfortunately the gNewSense installer is currently broken and has > been for quite a while. So I don't think there is currently a way to do the > install without a libre distro without removing the hard drive, and IMHO > that is too high a barrier for entry for new users. Also, I've found that > 5-10% of the time doing this somehow corrupts the hard drive (this is with > multiple machines and SATA adapters; I have no idea why this happens.) > > IMHO it's important to be pragmatic while developing free software; just as > rms built GNU at first using nonfree software as a base layer, I don't > think it's a big threat to software freedom"to install a libre operating > system via one that includes a few binary blobs that can then be deleted, > esp. if that means the user and developer base to improve the libre distro > is likely to increase faster due to decreased entry barrier. > > The important thing is to delete the nonfree software as soon as possible. > An example of this is when rms was using the OLPC XO1 as his main machine; > he got the sys admins to delete the binary blob that made the built-in wifi > work, and then was fine with the system (as that was the only nonfree bit). > So perhaps we should include in the install instructions directions on how > to remove all of the Debian stuff from the hard drive after Parabola is > working (the only tricky bit is that some stuff on sda1 - eg boot.cfg - > must be preserved.) > > Perhaps even better would be instructions to replace the Debian system with > a "backup" Parabola system, so if when changing low-level software on the > main system it becomes unbootable, it would be easy to fix. > > That said I have no dispute with parabola/mipsel needing an installer > not dependent on any other software as soon as possible. > > For the Yeeloong, the easiest install method (by pressing tab after having > inserted a USB key with a vmlinuz file and a .lzma file) is also not well > documented, but I'm guessing some combination of just looking at the BJLX > example, doing more search for doc, and bugging BJLX and Lemote people will > be enough to get it working. > > On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 11:05 PM, Charles Roth <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I vote for option 3 and/or let's develop an ISO for a free precursor OS > > for people to use. > > > > > > > > On Mon, Jan 09, 2012 at 12:56:43AM -0200, André Silva wrote: > > > This discussion is about that an user put an article that recommends > > > Debian to install as precursor operating system. How to all knows, > > > Debian is a non-free distro don't recommended by FSF ( > > > http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html ), but as in this case is > > > being used as precursor OS, we decided open a discussion, and you could > > > to help us to make a decision: > > > > > > 1. Vote to eliminate this article completely, because it threatening the > > > freedom. > > > > > > 2. Vote to keep it like this. > > > > > > 3. Vote to improve this article eliminating non-free contents and puts > > > an alternative for it. > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Dev mailing list > > > [email protected] > > > http://lists.parabolagnulinux.org/mailman/listinfo/dev > > > > > > > -- > > Charles Roth > > Cultural Detective and Curious Antiquary > > General Editor of The Encyclomundi Wiki > > Email: [email protected] > > Microblog: http://parlementum.net/parlementum > > About Me: http://encyclomundi.org/wiki/User:Encyclom > > "Like so many Victorian gentlemen of leisure, he published pamphlets" > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Dev mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.parabolagnulinux.org/mailman/listinfo/dev > > > > -- Charles Roth Cultural Detective and Curious Antiquary General Editor of The Encyclomundi Wiki Email: [email protected] Microblog: http://parlementum.net/parlementum About Me: http://encyclomundi.org/wiki/User:Encyclom "Like so many Victorian gentlemen of leisure, he published pamphlets"
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