> The reason I ask is that Corel's installation asks almost no questions > except for basic password stuff. The result is that their installer > breaks often during installations. RedHat's installer lets you test > video and such and works quite well but it doesn't ask many questions > either unless you go into expert mode. I seem to recall that RedHat 5.1 was very hard to install on my laptop... > A bit of new input on this, I just installed SuSE7.0 on a machine. > It's got some nice additions to the installer regime while also > keeping things really simple. It seemed to autodetect all my hardware > except for my ethernet card. It does let you intervene if it's > detected wrong (a good idea in my view) but simply agreeing that it's > detected your hardware properly, you can just press Next and move on. > They've added a really nice feature that gives you two sets of > onscreen arrow keys that let you adjust the size and orientation of > your video. I thought it was a nice touch. > They also seem to have a new user guide to Linux as an online > tutorial. Haven't looked at the contents of this but it seems like a > good idea. I have no experience of SuSE, but I have heard some good reports. As and when my old pentium arrives from the UK (I recently emigrated to the USA, and I'm still having kit shipped over) I might give it a try. > The problem I see with delivering stripped down version of Linux is > that very quickly a user is going to read about some application, > download it, and find that it's not "compatible" with their > installation because they don't have this or that. Unix has always > been a building block system and without a whole bunch of blocks > available, one will surely be missing when new software is installed. However, if the updating proggie (in the Windoze world, 'add/remove programs') were to check the dependencies and either automagically install them at the same time, or download them from the relevent web site, then that problem would be solved. I hate to compare Linux to Windoze (in general Linux rocks, Windoze quivers) but the 'add/remove programs' bit will automagically tell you if you need additional stuff in order to run an application (albeit only stuff on their CD) and will automagically install it for you at the same time. The same goes for the Windoze Update facility that upgrades/adds applications over the Internet. If Billy Gates can do it, I'm sure the geniuses (genii?) behind the various Linux distros can do it too... > I do think that it's silly to be providing, by default, things like > Star Office, AbiWord, Word Perfect, etc. If that stuff is on the CDs > that's great but they should be things you ADD to your normal 'newbie' > installation, not something you have to remove as an 'expert' > installer. I agree. > > 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... > > Data...no time for data creation :-) About the only thing I've had time for recently in Linux is to search for E.T.'s phone call... > > 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 - > > I agree but let's look at those examples. A newbie looks at this and > says, "Yuck, I don't want any of those editors; I want Word Perfect." > If you leave those out you might as well leave Pine out (some might > argue that's a good idea too). But what does the newbie do, after > he's done all this with the view that he does his editing with WP and > he needs to add a line to fstab? What's he do if he loses his X > installation? What's he do if he edits rc.sysinit and saves it as a > Word Perfect file (grin)? My list above was not intended to be exclusive - I used those purely as an example. However, I agree with your points. There would need to be a note to inform the user that as well as the bells and whistles GUI word processor, he needs a basic non-GUI editor in case the pod bay doors won't open... > I'm not really arguing that you're wrong but I am suggesting that > excluding a lot of this stuff is a tough call, especially for the > uninitiated. You are quite right. I have only really played with Linux so far. I set up a fax server on SlackWare UMSDOS a couple of years ago, and then started playing again about a year ago. I am fairly strong on computers in general, but pretty new to Linux. I find package selection very daunting, as I don't have a clue what most of them do... That is why I believe that the installer/updater is more user-friendly, both for newbies who don't always know what they want, and for experts who know exactly what they want, but don't want to spend all day selecting/deselecting packages... Regards, Ozz.
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