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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."
Debian Installer - Beta 3 - Usability Review
Introduction
The main reason for me writing this text is that I tried the new Debian Installer Beta today and was quite pleased. It is a good way to set up my favourite distibution. Nontheless I stumbled over a few usability things and thought that it might be a good idea to write a walkthrough from another point of view: Bob User
Bob is the guy most of us target at in order to get him to "switch". The "Windows Power User" which knows Windows from the beginning, knows how to keep his system clear and safe. He is quite unhappy with Windows for the obvious reasons. But he is used to the "reboot-solution" and doing everything without a manual, not even really knowing what is going on.
Bob heard some of his geek friends talk about something like Debian, which has a rich repository of easy to install software, can be bleeding edge if he wants and has all the other features of a common Linux like stability, safety, reliability and freedom.
He had a look at this Knoppix thing and found it quite impressive, now he wants to do more, he wants to install Debian...
The Beginning
Bob grabbed a bunch of CDs from the newly released Debian Sarge and put the first CD into the disk drive of his old test computer which used to run Windows 98.
"Huh" he thought and was pleased to see this nice graphics. The main problem that he had was that he had to think twice what to do next. He was given two options which didn't fit. What he wanted to do was to actually install a Linux, he didn't need any help and wasn't quite sure what "boot" would do. As an average windows user he just hit ENTER and awaited the things to come.
This seemed to be the right step. Some funy lines ran over his screen and a few seconds later he was confronted with a nice screen that ascked him to "Choose language". The screen told him that this also affects his default locale and his location. He knew of the powers of Linux but was quite sure that this wouldn't affect his location, otherwise he would be really surprised. He didn't really know what his "default locale" was but he believed it to be a good idea to stick to en_US.
Though the earlier screen had told him that his selection would affect his location he was still at the same place, in front of his old PC.
The next dialog asked him about his "Keymap" which seemed to be something similiar to a keyboard layout, which actually should have been affected by is former selection but appearently was not.
So he selected American English again and went on.
The next things were quite familiar. Some hardware detection happened and some components were loaded. This was fine with him.
Network Configuration
The hardware detection seemed to be successfull and he was prompeted to enter a hostname. The next familiar thing he thought and as it actually was his Debian system he stuck to the default.
Some more hardware detection happened and afterwards he was prompted to do some partitioning.
Partitioning
He had seen such thing before and never really understood them. But it didn't matter as he just had deleted his Windows 98 with fdisk.
So he thought it would be a good idea to stay with the installer and let him do the work. Manually was something he didn't like, anyways.
Though he had an idea of what a home directory might be he was quite unsure and used the given recommendation.
A "mount point" wasn't that much help to him, but as the installer had done it it was ok with him.
The only thing that confused him a bit was the lightnig system next to his "primary" partition. He decided to just stick to the smiley next to it and go on. The other words weren't that much use to him as he had never heard something about "swap" or "ext3".
Then he noticed the two exclamation marks at the top of the screen. Were they a sign for an error? He coulnd't remember if the had been there before or not.
He got a l