Debian Plans New Installer For Woody

msnomer writes: "Debian is planning to replace their installer for Woody, their next release. Plans are to have it be highly modular, using debian packages as the modules. The discussion is going on in the debian-boot mailing list; you can also read the design draft on the web site." This looks very interesting -- as a recent Debian recipient (victim?) at the hands of an expert, I must say the install is pretty intimidating. This sounds like a smart area to focus on, but what would an ideal installer consist of, anyhow? Give examples, double space;)

Comments

For me?

[w3woody]

I must be tired, but when I read the headline, the first thought that went through my mind was "why did they go through so much trouble for me?"

- Bill Woody

Re:Plan for 2002

[Fist Prost]

I would reccomend looking at the shiny spots and faults alike on the more popular (read:more often installed) OS's out there and try to improve upon those concepts. Above all else, try to have "glossy-eyed newbie" and "I can install Windows" modes as well as the "I want to fdisk my hardrive in the most primitive editor you got" type, which a lot of folks still prefer.

For the newbie/assisted install, try to probe for as much stuff as you safely can to minimize confusion. Also keep in mind that lines like;

It appears you have a [fxy339 10/100+due/ipx with added dongle support, revision 667], is this correct? [y/n]

Will scare the living bejesus out of someone who's never installed an OS before, so maybe don't have things like that in the first timer section. Just try to set it up for them and they can maybe try the next level install with a friend if nothing works right.

Another thing, half the time an intermediate user will find they forgot to do something right on the network setup or maybe the sound card doesn't work right after installation, post install setup is muy importante. The approach earlier Red Hat (can't say about now) and slackware distros is nice. Individual parts of the setup (like modemtool, soundtool, netconfig, etc) may be run from the CLI. Try to integrate this into the setup program itself, so the person can just type "setup" and reconfigure any part of their system from curses or X, without having to know the name of the specific thing they're looking for.

One last suggestion I'd like to make is the applications selection. Try to get a 1 paragraph blurb about each package offered, and then group all the similar apps together for selection, an example would be;
Word Processors(check any or all
that interest you)-
[] VI. The classic text editor of Unix
hackers. Has a lot of ~'s in it. Don't
be frightened however, you'll get it.
[]Emacs. The classic text editor of Unix
hackers. Click on "tools" then "read
news" to find interesting porno.
[]Pico. The weenie text editor. It has
all the commands at the bottom. Check
this box and be a weenie.

The user could check off any that interest them, and then remove them from their system at a later time simply by returning to setup (see previous paragraph) and entering the "apps" section. Just a few suggestions for the ideal installer. Stea^h^h^hUse them as you will.


Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."