[Nottingham] Expert support in installers (Oh how I laughed)

[Martin]

>> Is this where FLOSS falls down in that the clever geekie
>> 'under-the-hood' stuff is done well but then is left only occasionally
>> utilised because noone cared to do the boring user-friendly
>> interface?...
>
> I started to respond to this but ended up writing far more than I felt
> most folks would care to read. I'll see if/how others respond.

>From you, that should make for a good blog posting... ;-)


Cheers,
Martin


On 02/12/2012, Joshua Lock <incandescant at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2 December 2012 11:28, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 02/12/2012, Joshua Lock wrote:
>>> On 2 December 2012 09:35, Jason Irwin wrote:
>>>> On 2 December 2012 16:59, Joshua Lock wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I almost thought you were serious until this point. Then I realised
>>>>> you must be trolling because, of course, the alternate CD *was* just
>>>>> happy button clicking too, or at least happy key pressing.
>>>>
>>>> I was being a bit OTT, but I quite liked the alternate CDs and used it
>>>> in
>>>> preference to the normal one.
>>>
>>> As I understand it the netinstall/mini ISO will enable you to do the
>>> same things the alternate installer did, so long as you have an
>>> internet connection.
>>>
>>> In seriousness, if the lack of an alternate installer is a genuine
>>> regression for you then you should file a bug. My first response to
>>> any rant aimed at me is "did you file a bug report".
>>
>> Why must there be an 'alternate' installer that then suggests
>> 'alternate' support and development and maintenance. Why not include
>> multi-layered filesystem stacks as an abstracted layer as part of the
>> *normal* installer?
>
> The most common argument I hear is that distributors want to offer the
> most reliable and easy to use installation they can. One can equate
> this to the thinking that one way to help reduce the amount of
> installation failures is to have a smaller, more well controlled, code
> base for performing those installations.
>
>> Old Mandriva went a long way towards supporting that. Worked well for
>> RAID and LVM and RAID + LVM. But then, I had a setup where I wished to
>> use drbd and I'm sure I replicated work that EVERYONE else must have
>> to go through to include drbd...
>
> I take it by EVERYONE here you mean everyone who wants/needs drbd?
>
>> Why can we not have a 'plug-in' or abstraction for that to be a normal
>> option in the installers?
>
> I believe both Anaconda and YAST have such architectures.
>
> Why does every distribution feel the need to write their own
> installation architecture? *shrug*
>
>> If not already considered and included for mdadm RAID, LVM, others,
>> ... : What happens when people wish to use the raid and snapshot
>> features of btrfs?...
>
> I believe Anaconda and YAST already support btrfs.
>
>> Also provision now for GPT for example?...
>>
>>
>> Or do we all follow the proscribed install and have to rework the
>> wheel for anything 'different'?
>
> Ubuntu have chosen to go this route in their *desktop* installation
> CD. If you want to use RAID and what not they would rather (so far as
> I can tell) you use either the server installation CD, or spin your
> own custom ISO (with the tools they provide).
>
> Fedora and OpenSUSE support many more options in their installers.
> I've known several technical folks get confused by the wealth of
> options in YAST.
>
>> Or do we promote easy polished choice?
>
> Why wouldn't we promote easy?
>
>>>>> Why? Why not just install Mint? Which (so far as a cursory glance
>>>>> shows) is an Ubuntu re-spin with CInnamon on top.
>>>>
>>>> Same issue as Ubuntu.  No RAID support in the installer.  I have read
>>>> around
>>>> a fair bit today on resolving that (installing mdadm etc), but using
>>>> the
>>>> 12.04 alternate is in fact a much simpler solution.
>>
>> "Reading around a fair bit" is not 'polished'.
>>
>> Is this where FLOSS falls down in that the clever geekie
>> 'under-the-hood' stuff is done well but then is left only occasionally
>> utilised because noone cared to do the boring user-friendly
>> interface?...
>
> I started to respond to this but ended up writing far more than I felt
> most folks would care to read. I'll see if/how others respond.
>
> Joshua
> --
> Joshua Lock
>
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