Boot cd
Jeff Vian
jvian10 at charter.net
Thu Jan 19 14:18:14 UTC 2006
On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 13:12 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Thursday 19 Jan 2006 12:01, Tim wrote:
> > Tim:
> > >> Why do people do this?
> >
> > Anne Wilson:
> > > Because it is the first time they have encountered an ISO image.
> > > Very many people make the mistake of copying the image to a disk,
> > > first time around. Someone has to explain what it is, and how it's
> > > handled differently - just once - and the problem disappears.
> > > Everybody starts somewhere.
> >
> > I can understand burning the ISO as a file to a disc, as a mistake.
> > But considering the steps that you go though to get your hands on an
> > ISO (reading pages, finding the ISO, working out which one you should
> > get, etc.), do they really miss something saying burn a disc from
> > this image file?
> >
> I don't think it would necessarily be understood if it did. I'm
> assuming that in most cases they are coming from a windows world and
> point-and-click burning apps.
>
Even the windows world has the concept of a disk image, vs the disk
contents. This is IMO a willful ignorance, fostered by an OS and
applications that assume you don't want/know how to think.
> > Should the top of the Fedora page listing the ISO files say, "these
> > are 'image' files, burn a disc from them, don't unpack the contents
> > and copy them to a disc"? Could it be made damn-fool-proof? ;-)
> >
> Nothing is every fool-proof :-) Maybe a link to some 'First time users'
> instructions'? I'm guessing that instructions on where to find 'Burn
> an image' or similar on Nero and Roxio would sort out 99% of burning
> problems.
>
Impossible! Those apps change the menu structure almost as often as I
change clothes! (At least with every revision.) How would you keep your
instructions current with the application?
> > Though, to be fair, I've seen a couple of Windows CD-burning
> > applications that give you no option to burn from an image, and a few
> > that hide the ability.
> >
> I haven't seen too many of those apps, but the ones I have seen don't
> make the image-burn too obvious.
>
> I'm not trying to be smart-ass, it's just that for many newbies it's a
> completely new concept. IMO a lot of duplication of effort in helping
> these people could be avoided by making provision for them clearly
> available linked from the download page.
>
I concur, and would like to add that IMHO *nothing* can force a person
to read instructions until after they try what they think is correct and
hit a brick wall because they did it wrong.
Those who _know_ they are not all-knowing are the minority and seldom
have problems. The majority don't understand how little they
know/understand and those are the ones who fail to read or ask until
after they broke it.
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