i have to *choose* between graphical desktop and S/W dev?

David Cantrell dcantrell at redhat.com
Tue Mar 16 17:00:28 UTC 2010


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, 16 Mar 2010, Bill Nottingham wrote:

> David Cantrell (dcantrell at redhat.com) said:
>> That's just the way we implemented it.  The driving force behind these
>> decisions was to make things simple for the user.  When presented with check
>> boxes at this point, we found most users would either (a) leave the default
>> choices in place and continue or (b) check them all for fear of missing
>> something.
>
> Also, by having the the tasks be explicit lists of groups, as opposed to
> sets of groups that can be combined on top of some nebulous 'common' set
> of groups, you:
>
> - don't have to have weirdness with where you specify that common set of
>  groups
> - can define a minimal install sanely in the same context

Very true.  In keeping with the spirit of minimizing installer complexity, we
purposely chose not to implement various forms of choose-your-own-adventure
package selection.  You can customize package selection now, which is more than I
think we really need in the installer, but I could be alone on that one.  I
think the tasks we present users in the interactive installer are plenty for
package selection for several reasons:

1) Advanced users all have different ideas of the perfect package selection
interface and they never really align -or- if they do, no one ever uses them
because "that's not what an advanced user would do".  For advanced users, I
think we already have two perfectly acceptable solutions:
     a) make your own spin
     b) create a kickstart file

2) Once yum entered the distribution a long time ago, I always wondered what
all the fuss over package selection in the installer was about.  Didn't get
something during installation?  Add it with yum.  Done.  Why is that hard?

3) For the non-network connected users who absolutely need to have all
packages or specific sets of packages installed by anaconda, choices 1a and 1b
work just fine.  Some may say that's a lot of work, but you're using a system
not on a network, so you're really not doing things the easy way to begin
with.  Also, you can always prepare a system by running through the installer,
then using yum to add/remove things, then use the output of:

     rpm -qa --queryformat "%{name}\n" | sort | uniq

For the %packages section in a kickstart file.

So, if you have suggestions for the task definitions in the installer, or
ideas for new tasks, let us know.

- -- 
David Cantrell <dcantrell at redhat.com>
Red Hat / Honolulu, HI

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAkufuSwACgkQ5hsjjIy1VklgQACg7NoT8i49/p/WdGXKII+bQRtw
2Y8AoPahryPTHUaA1jYtqZoYKUPIsAFU
=/SyV
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


More information about the test mailing list