[GW-C] [ECOTONE] Re: rant of the day: installing fedora

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Tom Horsley <horsley1953 at gmail.com>

| How did you get past the screen that only lets you pick a whole disk
| drive then, as the only possible option after that, click "Done"?
| (Or, as I did the first time I saw it, push the reset button :-).
| 
| No power on earth could get me to click "Done" under those circumstances
| when installing on a system that contains data I want to preserve.
| Only after trying the install on a totally trashable test system
| did I find that "Done" actually means, "OK, now you get to pick
| partitions."
| 
| I don't have enough trust available to believe that they surely
| won't actually wipe out the whole disk (especially when every
| other part of the redesign has been to reduce or eliminate options).

I find the installer confusing.  I would need to take a movie of using
it so I can actually accurately report the confusion.  But here goes
an unreliable report:

When you are selecting the disk(s) for the installer, you are NOT
selecting the partitions.  I think that Tom didn't know this and hence
was scared by this screen.  With good reason: I don't remember that
this was explained clearly on the screen.

When you left-click on a disk icon on this screen, the icon gets
highlighted.  Apparently this does not constitute "selection"!  I
found right-clicking would flip a checkmark, and that is selecting.
Sheesh.

Then you press "done".  If I remember correctly, nothing happens for a
bit.  Not even a cue that the system is busy (like the mouse cursor
changing).

I forget exactly what happens next, but after a modest delay, you get
to select a method of specifying how partitioning is set up
(wipe disk, use free parts, or manual, for example).

Everything is obvious in retrospect.  Too bad we don't travel the
right way in time for that to be good enough.

Anaconda(?) really needs to cue the user about its state: the user
needs to know when it is busy and the screen doesn't yet reflect
the user's last action.  This comes up in more than one situation so I
infer that it is a general Anaconda problem.

Anaconda's screens need to be more wordy to make things clearer
and less scary to the user.