Fedora Present and Future: a Fedora.next 2014 Update (Part I, "Why?")

[Chris Murphy]

On Mar 23, 2014, at 6:27 AM, Ian Malone <ibmalone at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 22 March 2014 16:40, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 22 March 2014 03:54, Chris Murphy <lists at colorremedies.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Are you asserting that people who bitch and whine about the installer are entitled to a monopoly on mocking hectoring tone; and unhelpful, annoying, unproductive engagement?
>> 
>> I don't think any of us should do it, ideally. But perhaps in gentle
>> chiding of someone who could have answered their question with Google
>> in 10sec, then OK.
>> 
>> When someone is unable to even install the whole OS, no. Inappropriate.
>> 
>>> It is actually a complex layout.
>> 
>> I beg to differ. It is not /trivial/ but it is not complete.
>> 
>>> Most of the world's installers can't deal with what you just described.
>> 
>> Factually incorrect. Windows 7, Ubuntu 13.10, Debian 7, Crunchbang and
>> Elementary OS all had no problems.
>> 
>> On my desktop PC, I have a similar layout with  Windows 8, Mac OS X
>> 10.6 and Ubuntu 13.10. Again, no problems at all.
>> 
>>> The #1 OS install today is software restore [...]
>> 
>> In my extensive experience of OSes going back to when I entered the
>> business in 1988, following about 6-7y as a hobbyist, this is
>> incorrect. You're describing one OS, principally - modern Windows.
>> 
> 
> So, I read "#1 OS install today" as the installer for the #1 OS. There
> were a couple of other possible interpretations, but seeing #2 as the
> Windows retail/upgrade and #3 as Mac that made the most sense.

It was poorly worded on my part. It's a ranking of the most common install experience taking all of consumer computing in aggregate. The true #1 experience is actually pre-installed OS, but if you install an OS the most common experience is actually a re-installation via software restore. Windows, iOS, Android use this, and in ancient history Mac OS once did too. So the #1 ranking is multi-OS, it's the "restore" method. You have no choices other than to do it or not do it.

> It sounds like either you've been spectacularly unlucky installing
> Fedora or have some particular requirement (hardware, install setup)
> that it is failing to deal with.


I suppose that's a possible explanation, no matter how inexplicably improbable it seems this could occur for ten years, presumably on different hardware over that decade, while the same installer used by CentOS worked. But I don't know how bad luck explains the lack of evidence and curiosity.


Chris Murphy