The Installer redux, was: Fedora Present and Future

[Ranjan Maitra]

Hi,

You do have a legitimate point about enough users not putting in BZ
requests, however, I have grown very frustrated with the BZ process
(for a few other packages). Lazy maintainers (and let me throw away my
restraint to call them for whatever they are here) are using the
flimsiest of reasons to deny legitimate BZ requests. Case in point:
zathura which seriously needs an upgrade from before the early days of
F19 and every request being denied on flimsy pretexts. Same goes for
many other packages (LXDE spin's inability to handle ssh-agent since
the days of F14, etc, where I even tracked and submitted where the bug
was). Yes, these are all volunteer maintainers but still, it would help
if there was consistency in how these requests are responded to. (Many
of my experiences have been very good in the past.) Currently, I don't
even know if it is worth it for me to put in the effort to put together
a BZ request because I don't know if the maintainer will even bother
applying his mind to the request.
 
> I'd like to see MB rounded to integers and GB rounded to one decimal place except in the lower left Available Space and Total Space fields, which should also be integers.

What about if I want to fill the remaining space with the desired
partition? I believe that the answer is that you leave the space
allocation blank (as someone in this mailing list told me a few months
ago), but I would never have figured this out -- why did that option
from the old installer get incorporated into the new, or why was not
the fact that it has to be kept blank not mentioned during the install
partitioning process options?

> 
> 
> > Months later, I have figured out that there are buttons to set the time
> > according to a desired network provided. It is all hidden, and I
> > accidentally found it by looking and wondering why this option should
> > not have been included in the install options.
> 
> I don't know what this refers to. Buttons to set time per desired network?

OK, what i was referring to was the ability to set the time as per
chosen network time provider (and to provide a network time provider).
This was not easy to figure out at all.

> 
> > Btw, the new installer is uglier in terms of looks than the old, too,
> > but that is a matter of personal like! 
> 
> It's an unqualified statement that doesn't at all convey a path to fixing a problem.

Agreed, but this is the least of my concerns. I believe that the
installer is ugly, but it is a matter of personal likes and not
something that I care to mention.


> One area I know that's still considered weak is the installer's handling of existing installations. It doesn't make it easy to e.g. wipe a prior Fedora or Linux installation while keeping its /home for use with the new install. The expectation was that most users would do this with fedup upgrades rather than cleanly installing a new OS and keeping home.

Agreed again. This, however, brings in more problems and gripes for when
a new F has to be installed for the first time on a new system
(typically, once every few years when a machine is bought), and the
shock of discovering something that is so suddenly out of whack is then
substantially more.

Best wishes,
Ranjan

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