Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 10/12/2010 03:56 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
> On 10/12/2010 02:52 PM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> On 10/12/2010 02:16 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>>> On 10/12/2010 10:28 AM, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>>>>        Hi,
>>>>
>>>>> Striving for usability and pleasantness for the untechnical users certainly is
>>>>> a good thing. It gets problematic when you choose to make things technically
>>>>> inferior just to please those kind of users.
>>>>
>>>> We don't have to make things inferior to improve usability.  To stick
>>>> with the "advanved storage" example:  IMHO the selection screen between
>>>> basic and advanced storage is confusing and superfluous.  First it
>>>> should probably be named "local storage" and "SAN storage".  Second
>>>> anaconda can default to local storage if a local disk is present (option
>>>> to add SAN storage needs to be there of course).  If no local disk is
>>>> present it can go straight to SAN setup.  One screen and one mouse click
>>>> less for most of the users.
>>>
>>> If you want to appeal to the same audience Ubuntu is going for then you
>>> have to remove choice.
>>
>> Why? All that would be required would be to move it out of this
>> audience's way (the "defaults").
>
> Now we are really talking semantics.
I don't think so.

> The point is that users should not be
> confronted with choices they don't really need to make or they don't
> understand.
My point is to offer users who want choice the choices they want and not 
to force them into something they do not want.

>> As Gerd mentioned in another mail, SUSE's installer seems interesting
>> wrt. this. Its "defaults" cater the demands of "uneducated desktop
>> installers", while still allows many kinds of complex setups outside of
>> the "defaults" in "advanced menus".
>
> As long as most of these defaults and menus are not displayed initially
> that would probably be fine.
Please get yourself a SUSE DVD and try yourself - I was very positively 
surprized, esp. about SUSE's "disk partitioner's work-flow".

It is easy to use for beginners (Click-through), while it still allows 
complex setups.

> The problem here is that every time you present the user with data dumps
> (e.g. lists of defaults) or menus you create a cognitive hurdle where the
> user wonders what he's supposed to do or gets worried that he breaks
> something. Minimizing that is really key to creating a streamlined
> installation interface.
>
> The second aspect is that you want to talk to the user in terms of his
> "problem" and not in terms of the underlying technology.
Correct, ... my needs differ from that of others, ... therefore the 
tools being provided by a distro need to cater my needs, otherwise the 
distro doesn't fit my needs.

> For example a user
> wants to either replace the current System completely or install the
> distribution into free space on his HD and but into either the old or the
> new installed system.
Correct, that some user's demand .. but definitely not all, and could 
not be further away from my demands.

> The user doesn't care at all about "partitions",
> "LVM" or "mountpoints". This is different from the more apt user who wants
> to actually have control over these details (where exactly to put
> partition(s) on the disk for example).
Correct ... The latter for instance is what I had needed. I wanted to 
compare SUSE against Fedora. So I installed SUSE in parallel to other 
OSes (amongst them Fedora and Windows) on to the same machine.

If my only choice would have been erase Fedora and/or Windows, ... this 
distro would have disqualified itself.

> The issue here is that keeping these advanced features available could have
> a negative impact on the "easy-mode" experience.If you manage to prevent
> that from happening than more power to you but if not then creating two
> distinct workflows is really the only option.
I can't avoid to disagree.

Spawning different installers means duplicating work and wasting resource.

Ralf