A Better Installer for Debian? 301
F1re writes "Linux User mag in Germany has decided to include Debian on the mag and wants to make a more user friendly installer. They are looking for help from Debian developers. More info here Linux User"
Re:DrakX? (Score:2, Informative)
There's some fundamental problems, biggest would be rpm/deb problem, it wouldn't be impossible, but it would be still hard.
Painless Debian (Score:3, Informative)
Debian installer (Score:5, Informative)
I recently installed unstable, using the testing installer, and I was surprised to see that it doesn't seem to use dselect anymore! There's a much more friendly (although still text-based) utility it uses to select packages. Honestly, the installer really is pretty easy now (on par with RedHat, anyway, only a bit less pretty). It could be better for non-computer-literate users, but only stuff like the partitioning utility.
This was on alpha, btw. Things may be different on the x86 side of things.
dselect must go and friendly advice to the guys (Score:5, Informative)
In HCI terms, you *must* understand your users. If your user base is educated professionals who have done hundreds of debian installs and can compile their own kernel without assistance, then the current installer is probably okay, but it's not where Debian needs to go. It has the developer Linux user sown up; Debian needs to add to the collection other types of users.
So we pick another user set - the Linux newbie and/or Windows refugee. These people don't want to know about installers, and you must make the interface hard for them to screw up. Remember in HCI terms, allowing the user to screw up might be powerful, but it's wrong. I'm not talking about GUIs here (even though I like 'em), I'm talking HCI and interface. You can have a very decent text installer.
Moving along... You describe to the potential newbie users why you need an installer in very basic non-prejudiced terms, so they understand the problem space but without suggesting to them potential solutions. Grab their suggestions and recommendations and experiences and write them all down. This is your specification to a certain extent. Users have a keen insight on what they like and they don't like. Ignore their advice at your own peril.
You create a first cut at an installer, constantly second guessing the users: "will my mum be able to do this?" "Do I have to do this now?" "Is this a reasonable set of defaults that don't need to be adjusted?" You want the user to make as few decisions as possible, whilst postponing as many decisions as possible to allow experienced users to customize it if they wish.
Once the first cut of the installer is done, you must get a bunch of new users, and watch them use it without assistance. Learn from the mistakes or missteps they make, and learn if there's steps you can eliminate. And of course, eliminate any bugs the users find.
Repeat ad nauseam until it's hard to get a bodged unrecoverable install.
Developers are truly the worst people to ask to do this. They *know* the right answers, and will not even think that there might be other possibilities.
A good OS installer is like the old A/UX 3.0 installer - it literally was a one button install if you had a disk ready for it.
Other OS's with decent installers are NetBSD (with the possible exception of the very confusing disk partitioner) or WinXP (very few questions indeed).
Re:There is one - PGI (Score:1, Informative)
Wanted to run Debian but wasn't knowledgable enough at the time, and Progeny did the trick. Nicest looking website by far, BTW.
To bad they had to go...
Re:beginner friendly (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, unless it's so completely inconvenient to pull a proper backup that a reinstall is more manageable. For "modern" machines, this generally isn't an issue, as most have some easy removable mass-storage available (eg: CD-R/CD-RW, etc...) - but some older machines, particularly ones like my laptop, fall into a bit of a weird area.
Sure - I suppose I could transfer a couple gigabytes out over the network to do a proper backup -- but it's quicker and easier to just pull:
# dpkg --get-selections >selections.txt
...store that file, along with a custom kernel package (older laptops like mine need rather exotic hardware support that isn't in the default kernels) somewhere down
Then, if/when I do something stupid, it's a quick reformat of all but
# dpkg --set-selections <selections.txt
# apt-get -u dist-upgrade
...and I'm pretty much right back where I started. I can get the whole process done in about 1/2 hour - which is a bit shorter than backing up and restoring everyhing =)
Now, if I had a CD-R on the laptop, that would be a different story. Sure, I could get an external one - but that money (IMHO) would be better spent on a better laptop a few years down the road.
Re:There is one - PGI (Score:2, Informative)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-testing/2002/deb
Re:Shouldn't be too hard... (Score:4, Informative)
# apt-cache search <search term>
lists you all available packages that fit somehow the search term (search term can be the program name, parts of that name, a description
If you want more info on a package:
# apt-cache show <package name>
after that, you only need to install the usual way:
# apt-get install <package name>
I have the aliases 'i' (for 'apt-get install'), 's' (for 'apt-cache search') and 'si' (for 'apt-cache show'), which make work much easier.
Re:beginner friendly (Score:3, Informative)
I couldn't care less whether the installer is text based or graphical. What I do care about is that the installer saves me time. If I pop in a windows XP cd in a (compatible) PC I don't have to do anything. It just installs itself, recognizes all hardware and you end up with a useable box. With debian I have to do everything (including the tedious stupid stuff) manually. If you are lucky and select the right modules and all you end up with a login box to an outdated wm/xfree combination on an outdated kernel.
Being able to bypass hw detection is a desirable feature on debian (or any OS in fact). Not having hardware detection is bloody annoying and very user unfriendly.
Some thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder why they haven't posted anything on the Debian mailing lists...
The Debian people are by the way already working on a better installer. Woody will be the last release that uses the current one. This new installer will use aptitude instead of dselect for example.
Also, Linux User only plans for i386 support. Check this page [debian.org]. Debian supports many architectures, and the installer should work on all of them. Also, remember that Debian is being ported to non-Linux kernels. The Hurd is coming along nicely, and will probably released in Woody+1, and people are starting on a port to NetBSD. Again, the installer should support these kernels.
Re:There is one - PGI (Score:3, Informative)
Installing Libranet 2.0 was quite painless, other than having to swap two CDs several times, and then having 400MB of stuff to update via apt-get. Thank god I just upgraded my cable modem to the business-class service...
But, since the Libranet guys aren't too keen on giving away the binaries of version 2.0 (though you can download version 1.9 for free) I doubt they'd be too interested in contributing their installer technology...
pain of help screens... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:beginner friendly (Score:5, Informative)
A quick correction, if I remember correctly (my Debian box is at home) I think it should be
# apt-get -u dselect-upgrade
^^^^^^^
rather than "dist-upgrade".
Re:beginner friendly (Score:2, Informative)
it is: apt-get dist-upgrade
this is the same backup strategy that i have.
i would also recommend archiving the output of "COLUMNS=150 dpkg -l" because get-selections only tells you what the desired state of a package is, not it's current state. for example, if a package is on hold, get-selections will tell you that it is on hold, but not tell you what version it is currently (which is the version you will probably want/need to reinstall). the COLUMNS bash variable (other shells?) tells dpkg to print its output using 150 char width. otherwise some of your name and version strings may be cut short.
there is a new installer (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There is one - PGI (Score:3, Informative)
Yea h - PGI is an excellent installer, but why wasn't I given the option to run it when I boot the ISO?
I don't understand what you mean. ISOs that the pgi-build command creates are, in fact, bootable. Are you using an IA-64 system? In our experience we have to tell the EFI shell to boot from the CD-ROM manually, but conceptually this isn't too different from changing the boot device order in an i386's BIOS.
If you're having problems getting PGI ISOs to boot, please consult the users' manual [progeny.com] and/or file a bug report. We'd like to know what we can do to make PGI more reliable.
Thanks for trying PGI out! With help from the community we can reach 1.0 sooner; we're currently at version 0.9.6.
-- Branden Robinson, PGI Project Lead
I installed Woody with ext3 (Score:2, Informative)
You just need to grab the bf-something Woody install. It's the one with the 2.4.18 kernel. During the partitioning part of the install you select Linux extended. Then when configuring each partition, the installation asks you if you want it to be ext2 or ext3. Just select ext3. It's really that simple.