On 03/03/2014 04:40 PM, David Cantrell wrote:
On Mon, Mar 03, 2014 at 09:22:53AM -0500, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
On 03/03/2014 09:16 AM, Ric Wheeler wrote:
On 03/03/2014 04:06 PM, Josef Bacik wrote:
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 8:59 AM, Stephen Gallagher
<sgall...@redhat.com> wrote:
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On 03/03/2014 08:51 AM, Ric Wheeler wrote:
On 03/03/2014 03:43 PM, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
So if you were asking me "Are we removing btrfs from the
install options completely?", the answer is a resounding
"NO". However, if you're asking "Are we removing btrfs from
the drop-down of simple-install layouts?", my personal
recommendation is "yes".
I disagree - why would we remove the drop down option?
That would make it exceedingly hard and rare for casual users
to install and test. Basically, our Fedora btrfs user base
would drop to nothing.
Making it easy to test is a critical part of taking btrfs up
to the next level of stability!
It's a matter of user experience, here. By presenting something
in the guided drop-down, we are effectively asserting that they
are of equal utility and support. This is *not* the reality.
Now, if you want to talk about having some sort of
click-through for "I want to try out some experimental options
without going all the way to customizing my layout manually",
that (to me) needs to be a different, third path. But listing
it directly alongside the default gives a false expectation.
Now, this might be as simple as changing the modern drop-down
from * EXT4 * BTRFS * XFS [] Use LVM
To something like: * XFS-LVM (Recommended) * XFS * EXT4-LVM *
EXT4 * BTRFS (Experimental)
But even still, Fedora QA is at least ostensibly supposed to
test all guided paths and best-effort of custom paths. This is
more paths than are strictly necessary, especially considering
that we don't expect many people to actually USE the guided
paths (in favor of custom and/or kickstart).
Ok I was just confused as I haven't done a normal install in a
few releases. So you can still get to btrfs going through some
new "custom layout" option but you want to remove the "install
onto btrfs" easy button in the normal guided option? I'm ok with
this, I just want to make sure that I/users don't have to jump
through icantbelieveitsnotbtr hoops to install onto btrfs.
Thanks,
Josef
I am fine with something like what is proposed by Steve above -
let users have the GUI present an option that gives preference to
the default without totally hiding other options.
To be clear, I don't really like that option at all. I was presenting
it to show how it's not a great user experience. That being said, if
everyone else (and especially QA) prefers that approach, I'm certainly
flexible on the point.
I'm really hoping that the design, user experience, anaconda and QA
teams will make their opinions on this known. I know full well that
this is not my area of expertise. BCCing a few specific individuals to
hopefully get their input.
I agree with Stephen here, assuming I'm understanding him correctly. When
you talk about choices in a UI, you start exponentially increasing the
number of paths to do basically the same thing.
Exposing a filesystem choice to users really degrades the user experience.
Does everyone know what a filesystem is? And if they know, do they know
what the options are that we are presenting them? Do they know the pros and
the cons between them? Do they really care that much?
To me it sounds like the goal here is to advertise other filesystem options
in the hopes that we get some drive-by interest by people doing first time
installs. 10 years of bug reports tell me that people just don't care about
that option. A default is exactly that, a default. We should pick a good
default that is well supported across all of the architectures that we care
about in Fedora. By exposing a filesystem selection option at install time,
we're really saying we have that many defaults. Oh, and we need you to
understand them so you can pick one. Most people would probably leave that
option alone, which begs the question: why have it at all?
It's 2014 and we're still holding on to BTRFS as the solution to all of our
filesystem problems. That's fine, but it hasn't happened yet. And as long
as that's the story, we should expose something that's actually usable and
recommended at install time. I really see no value in offering slightly
different filesystem options at install time. If we want something
different, it should become the new default.
(For clarification, the above is speaking about the automatic partitioning
code path, not custom partitioning. Custom will likely always involve more
knobs and controls for users, and many filesystem types. But that's ok,
custom is for those users.)
I am fine with having the custom partitioning be the place to deviate from the
defaults...
Ric
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