Fedora 18 Installer: Counterintuitive and Confusing? 458
An anonymous reader writes "Igor Ljubuncic, former physicist and current IT Systems Programmer and blogger, reviews Fedora 18 with its new installer. In his role as alter ego Dedoimedo, the self proclaimed 'king of everything', Igor's Linux distro and DE reviews are often wry and biting and this review is no exception: 'You enter a world of smartphone-like diarrhea that undermines everything and anything that is sane and safe. In all my life testing Linux and other operating systems, I have never ever seen an installer that is so counter-intuitive, dangerous and useless, all at the same time.'"
The non-linear installer interface does look like kind of confusing, at least from the screenshots posted.
What happened to you Linux... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand what's happening with Linux these days. Buggy installers, crappy UIs in an attempt to change the "GUI paradigm" for whatever reason, unstable software (particularly compared to that in, say, Windows 7), kernel/power regressions, etc. I was interested in Linux because it was (at some point in time) more robust and stable than Windows, that it was technically superior. Now I'm not so sure anymore.
NB. I'm talking about desktop use; I'm sure Linux is superior in many ways for servers and embedded devices - the desktop experience as a whole still seems rather immature still unfortunately.
Is it the Windows 8 disease? (Score:2, Interesting)
A while ago, everyone tried to copy Apple's "intuitive" interface. The idea was, mostly, to make it confusing for geeks so it has to be intuitive for non-geeks, or at least they have to feel on equal footing, at least it seems that way from the usual results.
Now the source for ideas is Windows 8, the "everything must look like it's for a tablet" experience?
Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
I installed Fedora 18 (KDE Spin, of course) on Friday and "counterintuitive and confusing" was a pretty good description. And the partitioning- yeesh, what a mess- please just give me the option for something nice like gparted. I was very disappointed. 17 was much better. Both were still better than Ubuntu. Neither is as good as Mandriva/Mageia.
There has to be a balance between streamlining vs. asking questions vs. expert mode. There is little balance in Fedora 18. I have a feeling it will be revised quite a bit for 19 (at least I hope it will).
Re:I must agree (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering Linux is over 2 decades old, one has to wonder why the installer is re-written every other year. Slackware seems to have been the only distribution to get this stuff right. If it ain't broke, don't fucking fix it!
Re:I must agree (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the job of the team working on it.
Do you think this works just like a team in a corporation where tasks are assigned to them by a central authority?
Fedora is made by Redhat, so yes.
Re:Or submit a patch or two (Score:5, Interesting)
So where does that leave the rest of us? "Shut up or learn to code"?
The end result of this is more along the lines of "Shut up or go back to MS."
Re:Distro families (Score:5, Interesting)
Scientific Linux is not an alternative to Fedora 18.
It's based off Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, which is based off Fedora 12. Yes, 12. It uses kernel 2.6.32, grub 1, Gnome 2, System V init scripts and fstab instead of the systemd abomination, and is in short stable.
With Fedora, cutting edge is what you want, and bleeding edge is what you get. And, lately, hubris-high maintainers who don't give a fsck about the users, nor that Fedora is meant to be the basis for RHEL. F14 was the last usable Fedora from a professional perspective. Now, they're catering to dumb users and changes that break with the Unix paradigms that were there for a reason. Being different for the sake of difference and abstracted to the point that easy things become hard (or, in some cases, impossible) doesn't make for a good OS.
Devs/maintainers: If you want a new OS, go ahead and make one. But leave the existing "Unix-like" systems behind, please, you've screwed them up enough already.
Re:Mint a good alternative for traditionalists (Score:5, Interesting)