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Debian Installer Beta 3 Usability Review
Marcus Thiesen writes "Debian Installer Beta 3 was released two days ago and I wrote a small review concerning the installation part. The new debian installer is good way to set up your favorite distribution. Nontheless there are a few usability things and I thought that it might be a good idea to write a walkthrough from another point of view: Bob 'average' User."
Everything mandrake does is gpl'd, so there's no reason that debian couldn't keep their crazy "hard" installer for traditionalists and setup the mandrake installer to install debian easy-like for newbies. why duplicate effort?
Hasn't Knoppix made the Debian installer a moot point for Bob 'Average' User, at least for the desktop?
If he had never installed any OS from scratch before, sure, he would be confused - but he would be just as confused if he had pulled out the raw W2K install disks on a rainy Saturday.
sPh
A lot about the process can be learned this way. Most of us are used to this process, and think it all makes sense, but, as the author points out, there are a lot of things that WON'T make sense to "Bob User."
Debian should have a look a this to see what they can improve.
IBM is doing something smart, a call went out to employees looking for volunteers to install Linux on their company laptops. This is a great way to start, because those employees will probably feel a lot like "Bob" but have access to internal tech support.
Wouldn't you like to convert your friends without having to be THEIR tech support?
"Maybe throw in a warning that the whole disk will be wiped out, but how much user interaction does an installer really need? "
Seeing as how the big mindset is that Linux has choices upon choices of stuff for every little task, I'd say it's pretty much painted itself into that little corner. "Why put Konqueror there instead of Mozilla?" (Yeah, I know, not a great example.)
I guess what I'm saying is deciding on the defaults is sort of like trying to order pizza for everybody in the room.
"Derp de derp."
If it were truly easy to use, there would be no need for a walkthrough guide... each screen would present choices, and offer help if needed. Software installers should NEVER require external documentation.
Can we all please make this the last GNU/Linux "usability" study that begins with some ridiculous description of a "joe shmoe" mythical target user. I am sick and tired of it. It is possible to make something usable for "normal" users, while at the same time comfortable for both "mewbies" and "power users". Please let us retire "Bob" and "Aunt Tillie" and "Grandma" and every other stupid target user.
If you don't agree with my statement in the first paragraph go look at http://www.google.com - great for newbies AND power users. I've never heard anyone say "Google works fine for Aunt Tillie and Uncle Bob but I really could use MORE features to the interface." Its interface is clean, simple and completely intuitive. And if you want to do some arcane power search you CAN!.
And if google isn't a good enough example for you (because its a website and not an OS, etc.) look at GNOME. GNOME has proven that you can make a good clean interface that is user friendly, newbie friendly, and has all the access a "power user" could want. Yes, I firmly believe that the whining about lack of config options in every panel is entirely from masochistic freaks that simply like to know they can easly change whether the delay to close a window when the close button is clicked is 2ms or 3ms WITHOUT having to open a configuration editor. And BTW gconf-editor IS super simple and user friendly ANYWAY!)
Besides, I am probably what most people would consider experienced with Debian GNU/Linux (been using it exclusively for about 3 years) and I like a good clean, intuitive interface over something that is so-called "geek friendly" any day.
BTW - No I haven't read the whole article yet, I saw the bob bit and HAD to get this off my chest before I read the rest (now I will).
My rants...
Last week, my friends convinced me to try Debian OS to replace my old Red Hat Linux 7.x boxes. I either could go to Gentoo or Debian since I didn't want Red Hat any more due to the recent news. A few hardcore Linux users told me to try Debian first. So, I grabbed the Network Install to a bootable CD-RW.
Since I only wanted to explore the OS, I used VMware v4.0.5 (256 MB of RAM) on a Pentium 4 3 Ghz host machine. Everything was going well until Debian installer asked a few tricky questions. They were tricky enough even for me, as a computer geek and Linux user (not an expert).
I struggled with partitioning. The text based UI is nuts. I couldn't use up and down arrow keys. Also, there was no mouse pointer at this stage. At least add a mouse pointer or make this part GUI like Red Hat's installer (only used 7.x versions). I also had difficulities setting up partitions which is I am never good with even with Microsoft OS'.
With the help of a Debian friend, I got through this part. Then, the questions got really tricky like which mouse port (/dev/what?). I don't remember. There should be some type of autodetection. IIRC, Red Hat did autodetect for me and that was about three years ago.
More questions came up. There was one part where I had to enter a hostname. Little did I know, I was NOT supposed to use any capital letters. For example with JohnDoeFooBar, I kept getting an error later during setup from Debian about hostname problems. I changed it to something like johndoe, and no more problems! The setup never told me this. On my old Red Hat Linux boxes, it let me use capitalized letters like: JOHNdoe-P2.
The other part I struggled was, why didn't Debian's setup give me an option to boot into text mode. I didn't want gdm or any GUI login screens. I prefer text modes like in the old days. Red Hat 7.x did give me this option. I had to get help from my friend to fix this.
I am still learning Debian slowly. I just learned apt-get command which is nice. It isn't easy for a Debian newbie like me. The installer does need to be improved.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Agreed. Most people setting up linux initially (especially those that need this installer), don't care about how their drive gets partitioned or what gets installed where. What they do care about is whether their sound works, whether they can print, whether they can change their screen resolution, etc.
For what it's worth, I am the "Bob User" that he wrote for, and the article seemed to fairly accurately reflect the thought process that I would have gone through.
As far as easy installs go... I've plugged this before, but I think it's worth repeating that Arklinux has a really smooth install (including a little Tetris game to play during loading). After using Knoppix only a few times, I was able to install Ark on a Compaq laptop and give it a whirl.
Of course, your mileage may vary, but I'm dual-booting Ark on my home computer, and I've switched to using it exclusively (except when I'm playing Disney's Toontown, which only runs on I.E.), and I know next to nothing (I sort of know what a command line is, but that's about it.)
It's still in Alpha, so do be careful, but I would HIGHLY recommend it for clueless "windoze" users looking to get their feet wet.
The Dalai Llama
I would while away the hours conversatin' with the flowers... if I only had a .sig
My sig could be your sig!
Debian has it harder than the other guys; most distributions focus on just one platform (intel), or just a few (alpha, sparc, powerpc). Debian supports 11 hardware platforms. They need a flexible system that supports the needs of all of them. I'm not personally knowledgable about the internals of either the Debian or Mandrake installers, but this is probably one of the reasons they can't just use an "off-the-shelf" installer from another distro.
Google says Bob will use XP with the preinstalled NTFS and it's quite probable he doesn't want to dump it immediately and because Debian still doesn't support non-destructive NTFS resizing thus the install will fail for him.
Not sure which command line installer you are talking about, the only one I know of at all is gentoo. Debian's installer isn't a command line installer, its a tui and yes there is a very big difference between a command line interface and a text user interface.
why Joe User or Bob, rather, is installing debian anyway? The last Debian install I did was on a AMD 5x86/100 tablet (three nights ago). Before that, it was on my Dell Inspiron 1100 that had a crockload of not-well-supported hardware that required me to get 2.5.69 (the latest release at the time).
Debian installs usually take me several hours to get most things going from the mini/net install (a linux distro occupying 80 MB on your HD?--yeah, debian does that) to a what-I-consider usable system. However, I've configured everything myself exactly to my liking and probably recompiled once or twice.
Before I go further on my disorganised rant, a graphical easy to use installer that detected everything and booted me into KDM/X with KDE (I use enlightenment and gtk apps) would do nobody in Debian's core audience any good whatsoever and probably only alienate them further.
Tho I have to say, a few years ago, Storm Linux had a really kickass installer. Progeny's doesn't/didn't require you to reboot afterwards.
So I probably should be saying that if Bob wants a Linux distro that's easy to install in the beginning yet insanely powerful in the end (thanks to apt), he should be dealing with Progeny or whatever other debian-based distros there are.
The article did Debian a tremendous disservice in juxtaposing a mythical user with a distro that he'd never try.
P.S. My favorite install of all time is OpenBSD's. A twenty minute script was all it took--and I hadn't installed OpenBSD before. How kickass it that?
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
- Completely convert computer: (Warning, this will erase the entire computer!)
The second one can be like mandrake where it will resize the windows partition and use that space.Install Alongside Windows
I do security
Considering that Konqueror is a browser that is integrated with KDE, while Mozilla is a standalone browser which is cross-platform, no, I wouldn't say that it's a good example at all.
:)
As to choices, that's the great strength of linux. There are distributions such as Mandrake, which asks minimal numbers of questions per install (basically, what do you want to install/how do you want to use the system, + basic network mouse questions - for newbies) to distributions like LFS/Gentoo/Debian, giving the abilility to be able to install and customize the system to your liking, down to the most minute detail.
Windows cannot, and most likely will never be able to, span that range of options. Sure, even the most user-friendly dists like Mandrake and Redhat (Lycoris, Lindows, etc) need some tweaking. But they are well on their way.
MS Windows is just plain *limited* - and when you are customizing installs for customers who want to do certain things, that's a liability.
Now, let's argue about operating systems that are friendly not only to users, or to techs, but to *both* because that makes a huge difference when it comes to having your box serviced
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Windows 2000/XP: Partially text-mode, and yet, could be easily installed by ANYBODY.
Knoppix - Winner for obvious reasons
RedHat - A bit overcomplicated the last time I used it, but easy nonetheless. The graphical installer is nice, but doesn't always work. If you're lucky, you're sent to the curses-based textmode installer which is lightyears better than debian's. (of course, there are screwups, and videocard detection can crash on exotic hardware)
Gentoo - No installer is a good installer. HONESTLY! If you carefully follow their directions exactly using the examples they give you, a proficent Windows user could get it working. The installation process is incredibly well-documented. As a plus, a quick post to their forum will usually yield a solution in under an hour. I have yet to see another free distro which offers that kind of support. Despite all this, they still need a REAL installer.
Mac OS X : Next, I agree, Next, Yes, Reboot. Done. Enough said.
BeOS: I once accidentally installed this without realizing it (the version that came packaged for windows).
Debian: From the people that brought you EMACS! Debian was my first distro, mostly because it was availible on floppies (my PC at the time wouldn't boot from a CD), and it had a nifty install-on-demand feature which required you to only download the 20mb base (yes, onto floppies), which would then allow you to set up a LAN or PPP connection to download the proper packages (I was on 56k, so the PPP option was a godsend). Needless to say, it wasn't all that difficult or painful, though it had quite a few rough spots. (Such as a nasty bug where the installer's FDISK mixed up the device names, causing me to nuke the wrong partition.
This was 3 years ago. The screenshots in the article show an installer that's almost identical to the one I remember. Honestly, couldn't they have made SOME advances? The installer is simply a disgrace, and needs to be 10x easier!
As for me, I'll stick with my mac. I like an OS that doesn't have to be reinstalled regularly.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Still, when I heard "new installer" I was thinking "GUI". Sucks to be disappointed.
I'm relieved actually. Nothing worse than booting up into some cheap-looking GUI setup program, likely running in some weird VGA mode at a headache-inducing refresh rate. (Ok that's how it was a while ago, I dunno recently since I've been using Debian. I guess so long as your hardware is supported by X it's alright).
Debian's installer works fine. I've always liked it. All I use is up, down, tab and enter keys to move through the simple screens. I've never had it crash or do weird things, unlike my experiences with some other installers. Thank goodness it hasn't changed (much), and I hope it is going to be as reliable as the old one.
Excellent. There isn't much you can't do with one distro or another. Debian is great. RedHat is great. SuSe is great. Gentoo is great. Slackware is great. It's simply a matter of knowing one of them VERY VERY well. I know them all pretty well and I prefer Gentoo on desktops, and FreeBSD on servers. If it has to be Linux on a server, I prefer Debian unless it can't be. Then I use Enterprise Red Hat. Based on my preferences, you would assume that I know FreeBSD and Gentoo the best, and you'd be right. The important thing is that 90 percent of all UNIX and UNIXlike OS's are identical in nature. Learn that 90 percent, then find the one with the 10 percent left that you like the best. Plenty to choose from.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.