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

[Powell, Michael]

> I`m not an expert with Fedoras installers in any way.  This is simply my "user
> experience".  Maybe the "user experience" the installer provides should be
> different.

Your user experience is important, but just because you think it should be one way doesn't mean the community or developers echo that sentiment.

> > A non-gui installation is not something that the majority of users
> > will choose so it's not apparent, but if you want that method, here
> > you go:
> > http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/20/html/Installation_Guide/
> > ch-guimode-x86.html#idm219166212128
> 
> Says who?  And why not give the users that choice instead of hiding it?

The option or choice is given; why not make it more obvious? Because it would most likely pose more of a distraction to the target audience through clutter than it would ever get used; hardcore users that might favor a text installer are not the target audience anymore.

> > Keyboard configuration is not missing... it's one of the main hub options:
> > http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/20/html/Installation_Guide/
> > install-hub-x86.html
> 
> That one looks rather unfamiliar.  Was that in the F17 or F19 installers?

F18/19/20
 
> > The computer industry knows that more and more people want
> > installations to be less scary and faster. This trend has been seen in
> > the evolution of the Windows installer, MacOS, most Linux distros, and
> > even iOS or Android. There are going to be some Linux distros that
> > don't embrace this, you mentioned Debian and I'm sure slackware and
> > Arch won't either, but in the end it's all about attracting more users
> > to the product. The choices are there, but us hardcore users just have
> > to look more since we're the minority.
> 
> Faster, ok, that mainly depends on what the bandwidth of your internet
> connection is and what the server side delivers.  The only two scary things
> are the possibility that the network device doesn`t work (like Debian missing
> modules for some) and, far worse, potentially loosing your data.

Not really. Fedora has three installation images: Live OS, Full DVD, and Network. The only installation image that would be affected by internet connectivity is the Network Install image, because it downloads all packages in lieu of bundling packages. The Full DVD does allow the user to setup third part repos, but that usually is a minimal hit at worst.

> Having more choices doesn`t make installing any slower or any more scary.  It
> makes it easier.  Not having choices makes installing much slower and more
> scary.

I disagree; if a user is presented with the following filesystem choices, btrfs, ext2, ext3, ext4, JFS, reiser4, reiserFS, and ZFS, and each is presented equally with a single paragraph describing its benefits, unless the user has prior knowledge about what is the best choice for the intended installation goal, they're most likely going to spend a great deal of time reading each paragraph. If you simplify the choices to 4 instead of 8, the user has less paragraphs to read and can make a decision faster.