[PlanetCCRMA] landing on the Fedora 18 planet

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 11:35 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano
<nando at ccrma.stanford.edu> wrote:

> I don't see the point of turning an eminently linear process into a
> non-linear process.
>
> You could order all the selections you have to make before the actual
> install can proceed in a dependency graph and realize that yes, it does
> not matter in which order you make some of them. So instead of choosing
> an arbitrary ordering (which is what pretty much the whole world
> does[*]) you make the formerly linear process non-linear and confusing
> to anyone used to a "normal" install process.
>
> Which is fine IF there is a rational answer to the question: "what is
> _gained_ by doing that"???
>
> I don't see an answer, and the time you save because (for example) "you
> can set the root password while the install is happening" does not
> justify IMO the pain most people will experience.

Well, if you've ever used a recent Ubuntu / Linux Mint installer,
you'd know where the Anaconda folks were coming from when they
designed this. You boot the ISO, it checks for network and gets upset
if it doesn't have it but *will* continue. Then it basically takes off
with the defaults, assuming there's enough disk space. While it's
copying stuff to disk, it goes to the network to figure out your time
zone and whether your hardware clock is local or UTC, usually guesses
the language and keyboard settings correctly, then asks you to create
a user account. It's fast, too - faster than the F18 installer, I
think.

If you need to pay attention to partitions, where they are, etc., then
the Ubuntu / Linux Mint model breaks down a bit too, though not as
badly as F18's alpha builds did. But that's what Fedora was going for
- plug and play, point, click and ship, don't make me think.

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