Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice

[Jon Masters]

On Mon, 2010-10-11 at 12:51 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 12:44:49 -0500,
>   Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net> wrote:
> > > 
> > > I think that is a misfeature. I don't want anything irreversible to be done
> > > until I say go.
> > 
> > You know that Fedora has done partitioning/mkfs about halfway through
> > the install for a while now, right?  I don't see why there would be a
> > problem with letting that run in the background while continuing through
> > the questions.
> 
> I forget which stuff gets done afterwards, since I haven't done a fresh install
> for a while now. (I mostly do yum upgrades and play with live USB images.)
> But I do remember a clear no/no go point where disk drive file systems get
> formatted. Depending on the file systems being used that can take a little
> bit of time to complete, but is short compared to the rest of the install.
> I tend to do install all of the games, so my installs may take longer than
> average. I also always do custom disk layouts, so I might see things a bit
> different from people that don't do that.

In fairness to Rich, I think it's easy to get carried away with how
technicall better we are, but we shouldn't totally devalue the impact of
the shiny gloss on some users, reviews, and on general perception.

I used to be technical editor for a Linux magazine and I've read more
than my fair share of reviews of distributions over the years (and
written some too, it has to be admitted). Here's how it seems to go all
too often in general: 10% background, 30-40% installation, 20% what got
installed, then everything else. It's because reviewers are busy, and
don't have time to know a community - so first impressions count. And
Ubuntu is "known to be cool", so they get extra points in any case.

Sadly enough, this means that a shiny Ubuntu installer is to the whole
distribution what GNOME shell is to the GNOME project. It doesn't matter
if you've got a lot of bells and whistles underneath, or what you can
do, if you don't look pretty while you do it. It's just the reality. I
would venture that one of the reasons Rich sent his mail originally is
that he's aware of this mentality and pointing out its effects.

Jon.