I feel like the boot menu is going to be far too busy for the end user. I'd
go with something closer to
blah blah:
- Install Now
- Try without installing
- Show advanced options...
where:
- Install now -- boots into the graphical installer (no desktop unless
you cancel or something)
- Try without installing -- boots into livecd desktop (backed by RAM, I
guess)
- Show advanced options... -- opens a second-level menu with
- Text-mode installer
- Live boot without Ramdisk
- etc.
On 4 July 2017 at 21:45, Hermès BÉLUSCA-MAÏTO <hermes.belu...@sfr.fr> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
>
>
> One of the long-term plan for ReactOS was to have a graphical user-mode
> interface for the 1st-stage setup, similar to e.g. what may be found in
> newer versions of Windows (Vista+), as an alternative to our current 1st-stage
> setup in text-mode
>
> (note that I say “alternative”, not “replacement”, because both of them
> can live together without fundamental changes to either ReactOS or our ISO
> images, both of them can share core functionality, and finally because some
> people may prefer the text-mode either for unattended installations or for
> low-memory conditions).
>
>
>
> You can find some information about the 1st-stage GUI setup here:
> https://reactos.org/wiki/First_Stage_GUI_Setup . In our source code, it
> can be found in base/setup/reactos/ . Currently only most of the screens
> have been implemented, while the core functionality is not present. However
> this functionality can somehow be taken by reusing the source code of
> USETUP (see my branch https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/branches/setup_
> improvements/base/setup/ ).
>
>
>
>
>
> Abstract (aka. TL;DR): I explain below the needed changes introduced
> experimentally in the “setup-improvements” branch, revision 75273, to
> generate an all-in-one ReactOS bootcd, that includes both the 1st-stage
> text-mode setup + 1st-stage GUI setup alternative + live-demo
> functionality. This is meant to replace our currently separated “bootcd” /
> “livecd” ISOs, where the latter currently do not offer the possibility to
> install ReactOS. Some currently known potential problems are evoked.
>
>
>
> Images: Proposed BootCD contents : http://i.imgur.com/EBA6JHd.png ;
> Proposed Boot Menu : http://i.imgur.com/14n5Ryi.png .
>
>
>
>
>
> Having a 1st-stage GUI setup also means that it’ll also use the
> already-existing functionality that we offer in our “Live-CD” ISOs.
> Currently, the “Live-CD” ISOs we provide only allow for demonstration
> purposes, while the ReactOS installation proper is found in our so-called
> “Boot-CD” ISOs (which currently only contain text-mode setup). Thus, the 1
> st-stage GUI setup, as an alternative to the 1st-stage setup in
> text-mode, means that both ISOs can be merged all in one, and we won’t have
> to make a distinction between both: they will be able to offer both the 1
> st-stage in text mode AND a graphical mode (à la “Live-CD”) where it is
> possible to choose whether to test ReactOS in demo mode, or to install it
> via the GUI setup.
>
> Such an all-in-one ISO capability was already present in the trunk under
> the name “hybridcd”, but was used only when we built ISO images for the
> public events where ReactOS participated (FOSDEM, CLT, …). But now, having
> the setup process both in text mode and in graphics mode, in addition to
> the Live-CD demonstration capability, really suggests just using the
> all-in-one ISO and stop doing the “Boot-CD” (aka. only setup) vs. “Live-CD”
> (aka. only demo) separation. We would just generate only one type of ISO
> that contains everything.
>
>
>
> With that in mind, I have committed in my branch “setup_improvements”, in
> revision 75273 : https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?view=revision&;
> revision=75273 such changes to be able to only build an ISO that contains
> everything. These changes are minimal, in the sense that I haven’t
> purposelessly changed the names of the build targets just to be fancy. Such
> changes may be done later, but not now.
>
>
>
> The needed changes are the following: First, the build target that will
> generate the all-in-one CD is called “bootcd”, because this also was the
> main build target for ISOs before the change. Second, I completely remove
> the “hybridcd” build target, because its functionality are now absorbed by
> “bootcd”. Third, the build target “livecd” is reduced to its strict
> minimum. For the sake of building a RAMDISK boot drive (see comments
> after), I continue to generate an ISO for “livecd”. But I’ve changed the
> generated name to “liveimage.iso”, to emphasize the point that it has to be
> understood as a (virtual) disk image for RAMDISK purposes, not just as a
> ISO image. Note that I haven’t renamed the build target “livecd” to, say,
> “liveimage” to reduce my commit changes (such a renaming may be done
> later). The “livecd” target builds a list of files that need to be present
> in the image. The generated liveimage.iso is no-more a bootable ISO, I’ve
> removed inclusion of freeloader + El-Torito boot-sector + the
> USB-ISO-Hybrid functionality for it.
>
> The “bootcd” target has been slightly changed in order to include the
> liveimage.iso as a file (for RAMDISK), and to also add the contents of this
> image in a flattened tree within the bootcd iso: the two directories
> “Profiles” and “reactos”.
>
> The 1st-stage text-mode setup is kept, as said before, but its
> corresponding files + the installation CAB source + the 1st-stage GUI
> setup application proper goes into a (renamed) directory called “i386”,
> corresponding to installation files for an i386 installation (technically,
> 1 per architecture when we’ll have a ReactOS ported to other archs). These
> files cannot be present in the same “reactos” directory as the ones from
> the flattened LiveImage, because some of the files are different (smss.exe,
> registry, etc…) Our FreeLdr knows from where to boot the 1st-stage
> text-mode (from i386), as well as the Live-demo in graphics mode (from
> reactos).
>
> I need to adjust the code of few setup components for them to stop relying
> on hardcoded “reactos/” path, and instead use a more “dynamic” (determined
> at runtime) path.
>
>
>
> NOTE FOR DEVS/SYSADMINS: The “bootcdregtest” build target, generating the
> special ISO that is fed to our test bots, remains exactly the same, and the
> files contained in the generated ISO have not changed.
>
>
>
> NOTE about the RAMDISK feature: I enabled it so that a user can remove the
> demo media (CD, …) and reuse the drive for other purposes, while still
> being able to use ReactOS. Of course this requires a large amount of RAM
> available. And that’s also why I include the flattened liveimage files so
> that one can use the demo without the RAMDISK (when few memory is
> available).
>
> As is currently implemented, this makes the ReactOS all-in-one bootcd
> large (it gains a good 100 MB) due to duplicated space (the flattened
> files, plus the same inside “liveimage.iso”). I cannot do better (unless
> ditching either the RAMDISK, or keeping it but not include the flattened
> files) because ReactOS currently doesn’t have a way to boot from disk
> images **that are not meant to be a RAMDISK**. The day when this
> difficulty is removed, a single disk image could be used either as the
> RAMDISK or the (non-removable) installation.
>
> A second remark is that I don’t plan to have the 1st-stage GUI setup
> available when booting ReactOS in RAMDISK mode because, as a consequence of
> its current implementation, I would otherwise need to duplicate the
> installation CAB source in the RAMDISK image too, making it again larger.
>
>
>
> NOTE about the FreeLdr Boot Menu: Since ReactOS is not that stable
> currently, we like to boot it in debug mode, and redirect the output to a
> serial port (usually COM1). However some people don’t have serial ports on
> real hardware, so we propose to boot with debug output redirected to
> screen. However this may slow ReactOS down, so we also like to boot ReactOS
> with debug mode disabled. That’s why I proposed the declination of these
> boot modes for each ReactOS installation contained in the BootCD
> (Live+Setup, with or without RAMDISK, and with debug enabled or not). The
> problem is that it clutters a lot the boot menu. A remedy would be to
> implement in FreeLdr the functionality of editing **existing** boot
> entries to change their associated boot options, so that one could add by
> hand the options to enable (or disable) debugging. This is currently
> unimplemented. The only implemented feature is to set up a new boot entry
> on the fly to boot ReactOS afterwards.
>
>
>
> NOTE for regress-testers: Possible remark that I may hear: “I only care
> about installing ReactOS (perhaps just in unattended mode) and I don’t care
> at all about the GUI setup nor about the Live-demo thingie, and your new
> BootCD is too large. I want to be able to download & use the good-old
> bootcd for regress-testing.” . So what to do? Since we currently build and
> store the “bootcdregtest” ISOs, but are not publicly available through our
> www.reactos.org/getbuilds interface, I would suggest here to make them
> available to people, so that those who want to quickly DL and/or
> install/regress-test ReactOS could use these ISOs instead (which are really
> just the good old BootCDs, but with unattended installation enabled **and**
> with our test-suite included). They are not that much large, just a bit
> more than the old regular bootcd.
>
>
>
> Please let me know whether you have other
> remarks/comments/questions/suggestions/etc…
> to make the new BootCDs better.
>
>
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Hermès
>
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