> > I agree. We need a 'newbie' install option that makes all the technical > > decisions for you, as well as the other install options for those with more > > knowledge. > > Do you view a RH installation as being this sort of installation? What > about Corel? The problem I see with these installations is that if > autodetection fails in any way, the user has no recourse. That is a difficult area for me to comment on, as I haven't installed RedHat since 5.1, and I have never used Corel. The only other distros I've played with are SlackWare UMSDOS and TurboLinux. > > Also, we could use a more 'user-friendly' way for the 'newbie' to install > > additional packages at a later date. An option to automagically > > This is possible if you restrict your view to them actually buying them > (or getting them) from a single place and restrict what applications > you're talking about. It's easy to control installation if you're holding > hte proprietary keys to setup/installation but given the nature of open > source and the free range of application developers, you're asking a lot > to generate standard installations. It might be nice if we could get the > websites to better label whether this or that rpm requires compilation or > not though. RPM already checks for dependency issues. Surely it's not that great a step for it to check your CD or the ftp site for your distro to find the > > Another member of the group recommended taking out the repeated packages > > with similar functionality - I don't think that would work. There would be > > far too many holy wars re-started as to what is taken out. A better > > Agreed but the problem could be partially solved by presenting ONLY the > KDE tool suite and/or GNOME suite. They could stick vi, vim, and emacs on > the HD but not stick them on the menus. It gets downright overwhelming > for a newbie to find no less than 8 basic editors and half a dozen > formatting tools on his menu system when all he want to do is write a > note. That is fine if the user has sackloads of hard disk space. Many don't - especially newbies who are trying it out on a dual-boot Windoze machine, or on a laptop. For example, I only have a 6Gb drive on this laptop, and need 4Gb of that for Windoze - and that is way too tight; it's nearly all gone. Out of the remaining 2Gb, once I take out the suspend partition and Linux Swap, I'm down to 1.7Gb. A full 7.0 installation, plus StarOffice 5.2 and I'm almost out - and that's before the data... Better descriptions of the individual packages would help. These don't need to be long, just to the point. For example, "vi - small, no frills, powerful but steep learning curve", "pico - similar to DOS Edit", "Emacs - best suited to those with ten fingers on each hand", etc. Regards, Ozz.
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