Hi! Talking about installers, I not too long ago dug out an old copy of a what seems to be a now defunct linux install based upon Gentoo, called epiOS. It was made for mini ITX motherboards from VIA. They created their own custom installation program, and it has (what I thought anyway) the novel idea of asking the bare requirements to get the system installed, then all the other stuff such as network setup, users and whatnot (that aren't actually required for copying files to the harddisk) was asked while in the background the installer copied the required packages.
While this doesn't detract too much from the overall install time, if you're like me and start and install, walk away (or get distracted) and come back only to find it sitting there asking for some little yes/no answer before copying 600meg of data, then it can be mighty annoying. Getting the stuff copied, then adjusting config files later/during seems a nice way of parallelising the process, and gives a feel of speedyness to the whole installation. Just a (long winded) thought. On 3/15/07, Jonas Karlsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
As there are some bugs regarding the installer I had the idea of doing some rewrite of it as well. Not from scratch, but more to make it more effective, giving the installation more of a "flow". As it is now I don't think there's a good order at the same time as I think that some settings should be grouped or placed on another screen. While I have thought of this for some time, I also have looked at how other distros do, so some things might sound familiar to those that use/have installed those distros. The current order is the following: 1. Welcome 2. Install target 3. Packages 4. Bootloader 5. General settings (Hostname, Keyboard layout, boot theme, bios clock setting) 6. Time zone 7+ one config screen for each NIC 8. General network settings 9. Super user 10. Extra users 11. Ready? My suggestion for order and features is the following: 1. Welcome/Installation language 2. Time zone/bios clock setting 3. Keyboard layout (1) 4. Super user 5. Extra user (2) 6. General network settings (3) 7+ Config screens for all NICs not configured as dhcp (4) 8. Packages (5) 9. Specific packages (6) 9. Target drive (7) 10. Partitions (8) 11. Conclussion (9) 1) The list of keyboard layouts are too long. I'd reather have it with two columns, one there one can select country/language and one that dynamically updates with layouts corresponding to the selection in the first selection. 2) Extra user screen can be made optional by the user ticking a checkbox in the previous (super user) screen. In the case of the user ticking this box or that (s)he hasn't filled any user in this screen a warning should be displayed when "next" is clicked and the user should have to confirm that (s)he is aware of the risk running as super user only and that the choise is intentional. 3) I don't know in which order the network should be configured and I don't know how gateway interface is selected with multiple NICs with dhco, but my idea was this: I thought that maybe a list of all NICs available and a checkbox for each for enabling dhcp and a radio button selecting gateway interface (in case there's a static interface that should be gateway interface). Maybe DNS should go into this screen as well. I also think that this screen always should be shown even if no network interface was detected by the installer and that the user should be able to add NICs to the list of available NICs manually. Hostname may go here as well. 4) Here all NICs that were set as static interface should have it's own screen. 5) Here the user only should be able to choose 'minimal', 'recommended' (maybe some better name), 'full' and 'custom' and 'custom' activates the next screen. 6) Here the user should be able to select specific packages. 7) Target drive should only present drive selection and three options, 'auto', 'free space' and 'custom', where 'auto' partitions the whole drive in a proper manner (which is?), 'free space' uses the largest (continous) free space on disk for the same and 'custom' activates the next screen. Default fs should (could) be reiserfs and the two former options should format the drive as well. 8) Here the user should be able to partition the target drive (gparted) and then present a list where the user can assign a mount point for each partition. 9) A "Ready?" page where the most important (all?) configuration options are listed as well. It's the same amount of pages as before (if all pages are used) but imo a better flow and more consistant behaviour. I want some of this to be ready for 014 (is it wanted?), like the order and what settings belong where. The functionallity is too much for 014 and I think that is better off for 015. Depending on the status of 014 maybe all is targeted for 015. Comments, please! -- /Jonas _______________________________________________ gobolinux-devel mailing list gobolinux-devel@lists.gobolinux.org http://lists.gobolinux.org/mailman/listinfo/gobolinux-devel
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