Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

On 10/14/2010 07:05 PM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> 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.
>

For all of the above select the advanced installation. I'm not sure why you 
recognize that you have very special needs for you installation yet at the 
same time seem to insist to be able to use the same installation procedure 
tailored to users who don't even understand a lot of the words you were 
using above. Nobody is "forcing" you to do anything.

>> 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.

Nobody is talking about spawning different installers. You'd start the same 
installer but it would present you with a different workflow i.e. in the 
advanced workflow you'd create your partitions manually and in the easy 
workflow you select to wipe your disk or install next to you existing 
windows os and anaconda would determine the necessary partitioning itself 
without bothering the user.

Regards,
   Dennis