No subject

didn't "notice" any hitches. And if I don't notice any hitches, I don't
complain. =)

> > Whatever you do, don't dismiss the way Mandrake does its install (well
> > don't use tiny stars for check boxes!.. but otherwise).  It rocks compared
> > to Red Hats.

God yes, those tiny stars are slightly annoying, but that's probably
because the lcd on the TP600E is so...*shudder*

> When I hear people say Mandrake's installer rocks compared to Red Hat, I want 
> to know exactly what that means.  What I'm getting at is, is Mandrake's 
> installer really easier to use or does it just look better?  Because if it 
> just looks better, that's a very subjective thing.  To me, purple backgrounds 
> are ugly, and a themable installer is a little silly.  I'd rather the 
> development time be spent on more useful things.

I like RH's installer's "look" -- Mandrake's is fruity imo. However --
this is subjective, as you point out, and I do think that Mandrake does a
good job by keeping a checklist on the side (a status list ala Win9x) so
the user knows what steps (s)he has completed and which ones remain.

As a side note since X 4 eventually will support all the display devices
that 3.3.x does, I do like Mandrake's option to install 3.3.6 or
4.1.0. Guess I'll bug Mike Harris about that. ;)

> Granted, they do have some features that we don't, such as the step list.  
> Our bootloader screen is currently pretty confusing.  We will do better.  
> There are other areas that we can improve, but I'm a little confused when 
> people say our installer is hard to use.  We select defaults that make sense 
> for most people.  On a bare hard drive, you can do a workstation install with 
> GNOME and KDE simply by clicking "Next" until the end.  Sounds pretty easy to 
> me.

Oh? Ok, see, things like this need to be documented in the help or
something. Really.

> > Now don't get me wrong, I love RH and use it on all my servers - well the
> > VA Linux modified version.  I wish RH did to its own OS distribution what
> > VA Linux used to do!  patch it and add to it, to make a killer OS for
> > servers that was always up-to-date.  I would buy the official box-set for
> > everyone of my servers to get that service!
> 
> We have a limited number of people and a limited development schedule.  I 
> would argue that VA didn't have to shoulder the burden of creating the entire 
> distro, therefore they had the time and the resources to make those kind of 
> tweaks.  Man, we'd love it if somebody else would build the foundation for us 
> and we could just slap a coat of paint on it.  That would be great.

Hey, I think RH has a cool cutting-edge installer implementation. SuSE's
is pretty nice, too, though the latter as of 6.3 tended to throw a *lot*
at the user, which I think RH's installer does a good job of avoiding.

> We are working to address this issue.  There is a difference between being 
> up-to-date and being bleeding edge.  We want to provide stable, reliable 
> updates, not just the latest stuff pulled from CVS.  If you want to run the 
> nightly builds of KDE and Mozilla, then that's up to you.  

Doesn't rawhide address this?

> I don't know why you feel it is your duty to talk them into Mandrake.  
> There's so much more to a distro than the installer, which is essentially a 
> throw-away piece of software.  You install the box, and you don't see the 
> installer again until you upgrade.  

Hrm, I disagree. One of the *primary* things that new Linux users will
notice is a tight, fine-tuned installer. Well, veteran users will notice
it as well, but perhaps they just "put up" with junky text-based (not
ncurses, mind you!) ones (ala OpenBSD's). =) Seriously, though, a good
installer goes a long way toward impressing someone used to brainlessly
clicking "next" and so on.

> We are always trying to improve the installer.  Usually, those improvements 
> go into more enterpise oriented things like Kickstart.  But we do not want to 
> ignore the desktop users.  It is a challenge to build one product that 
> appeals to newbies and sysadmins running database servers and everyone 
> between.

Agreed.

> Thanks for your comments, I really do appreciate them.  They have sparked a 
> couple of ideas for me in areas that we can improve upon.  It's a little hard 
> for me to be objective because I stare at the thing all the time.

No, thank you! [Please fix the aggravating "initialize networking before
pcmcia" thing for laptop users! =)]

---
Dan Chen                 crimsun at email.unc.edu
GPG key: www.cs.unc.edu/~chenda/pubkey.gpg.asc