Several people in this thread seem to associate graphical installers with precompiled packages, why?
When I talked about a graphical installer in a previous post I wasn't thinking about taking away the current portage system, nor using precompiled packages, and absolutely nor taking away the current system of installation. I see this graphical installer as an add on.
This is how I see it (I really don't know if this can be done):
* For power users installation could remain as it is currently, a
command line compilation from the beginning of the system.
* For "idiot" users (sorry, but I wasn't the one that first mention
idiot-proof things :o) ) there could be a graphical installer that
could start from stage 1, 2 or 3, whatever she chooses, and *hide*
all the process with graphical dialogs. So the installer would
take care of all the compiling, partitioning, hardware detection,
boot manager installation,... *always* using portage and compiling
from sources behind the scenes. Once a graphical environmet is set
up, this same idiot user (sorry again) would use a graphical
emerge, kind of kportage, that again would do all the job using
emerge behind the scenes.So what's the problem with this? "Power users" could still do things the way they like it, and Gentoo could gain mass adoption from people (ok, idiot people, sorry again) that doesn't want to mess up with compilers, boot managers and modprobing. I don't see this as making Gentoo a clone of RedHat. I see this as imporving Gentoo and making it something much better than RedHat.
And don't forget that I love Gentoo the way it is right now, just I think that a graphical installer would be a great thing for Gentoo to gain mass adoption, that's all.
Regards Jose
Mark Saunders wrote:
I manage development at a small software firm in
Australia.
We began running Gentoo on our development systems about 8 months ago, and now have 5
systems in our office running Gentoo.
Before this we were using a mixture of windows, redhat and mandrake linux.
The primary reason we run Gentoo is because portage is far more user friendly and powerful -
far more "useable" - than any other linux package
management system.
In my opinion Gentoo is also easier to configure than any other distribution.
The Gentoo documentation is great too.
Whenever we get a new programmer on i have
them install their own Gentoo system from stage 1 -
it's a great learning experience (especially for developers who are not very familiar with linux to
start with).
I have often wondered what difference an idiot-proof installer and binary packages stored on the mirrors for portage would make to Gentoo..
I think it would completely alter the make up of the
userbase. It would take away from the advantages Gentoo has over other distributions. It would
change the focus of the distribution.
If there are people out there that want gentoo with a graphical installer or portage with precompiled binaries - let them build their own distribution based on Gentoo.
Would that make everyone happy?
On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 10:15, William Kenworthy wrote:
Not really: you would be putting a lot of effort in trying to make gentoo into a mandrake/redhat lookalike. Gentoo's advantages are its easy update and software management, both of which you are saying are not needed in the scenario you paint.
As far as better installer and hardware detection, gentoo has come a *long* way, but still needs to go further!
BillK
On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 22:23, Josh McCormack wrote:
...
hs with the stable, tested Gentoo of that moment, easily updated each 6 months,
and offer training (& a book) and certification. I'd personally lean toward making the CD have a nice installer with hardware detection,
possibly built off of Knoppix. Anyone else find this interesting?
Josh
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