Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[James Wilkinson]

Jeff Vian wrote:
> What I do not understand is why choices are being removed from menus and
> hidden.  I thought this was about freedom to choose, as well as making
> it attractive and easy for new users.

This comes down to basic distribution philosophy, actually.

The logic is that a good program should be as invisible as possible. It
should attempt to do the Right Thing as often as possible. Certainly it
should ask if there is a real decision that needs to be made, but it
should have sensible defaults. And if those defaults work well enough
for everyone, then it might make more sense not to have any other
options.

That doesn't necessarily mean "what most users want", but takes into
account how bad it will be if something goes wrong. For example, when
users choose "Quit" in an application, the chances are that they want to
quit. But if they've been editing a large document, then good
applications will still ask "Are you sure?"

The thread is about installing Fedora, so I'll take that as an example.
There are probably a lot more questions that the installer could ask: it
could offer to install lilo instead of grub. It could ask if you wanted
rhgb while booting. 

Each of those options requires a certain amount of thought. Each option
makes installing Fedora longer and more difficult. Even if you really do
want to turn off rhgb on a new install, you will probably still be
faster using a simplified install then making the changes you want, than
if you made your way through a more complex install that offered that
option and twenty or thirty others.

You'd probably find it easier, too: when presented with an option, you
need to understand it enough to at least realise you don't want it: that
goes for complex menus, too. If the installer can make intelligent
guesses, then you have to think less. And worry less: installing an OS,
even if you're used to it, involves a lot of time, a lot of decisions,
and some of those decisions can have major ramifications. The fewer
decisions you have to make, the less you have to worry that you got one
wrong.

The choices are still out there. But making it easy to choose doesn't
necessarily make things easier, even for someone who doesn't want all
the defaults.

There are a lot of rants out there on this subject. This one is long,
but it's worth reading:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html

James.
-- 
James Wilkinson       | "[What's] the Eight-fold Path?"
Exeter    Devon    UK | "A path -- with eight folds in it."
E-mail address: james | "That would be -- stairs."
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | -- "Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation", BBC Radio 4