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Re: quick install method (was Re: Deity project schedule problems)

On Sun, 21 Sep 1997, Richard Braakman wrote:

> As a preamble, I'd like to say that this mail is meant to clarify
> a set of suggestions.  I certainly don't mean to push.

me too.

> > my feeling is that:
> > 
> > a) the user will say "WTF! i have no idea what 'important' or 'standard'
> > or 'optional' means". e.g is elm 'standard'? or is it 'optional'? what
> > about gcc? is that 'important' or not? what is "reasonable to expect"?
> >
> > in other words, i think it's too simple....it jumps from a situation
> > of having far too much information to make a choice, to having far too
> > little.
> 
> Hm, I may have been unclear.  I meant to suggest that the existing
> `standard' and `optional' priorities be used to construct the
> "minimal" and "complete" sets, and that the quotes from the policy
> manual be used to describe them.  Note that I edited the quotes for
> brevity; the policy manual does mention where emacs and TeX and X go.

yeah, but new users can't know what 'standard', 'optional', or 'extra'
means until AFTER they've installed debian.

the names of the sets should be descriptive so that the novice user has
a good idea of what s/he is going to get if they choose it.

i want a simple menu where they can say "yeah, i want X and i want to
compile C programs and i want to play a few games...gimme!".  having them
guess what we, the debian developers, mean by terms like standard and
optional and extra defeats the purpose.


> > b) you wont get developers to agree on what's 'standard' and
> > 'optional' either. some will say mutt should be standard, others
> > will say mutt is dogs' droppings and elm is the standard mailer.
> > ditto for vi vs emacs (only about 100 times hotter flames), sendmail
> > vs smail, "dev tools are 'standard'" vs "no they're not!".
>
> Well, my whole point is that we have already made these decisions
> :) elm-me+ is `standard', mutt is `optional'. smail is `important',
> sendmail is `extra'. nvi is `important', ae is `required', emacs is
> `standard'.  The C/C++ development tools are `standard', and the
> others tend to have the same priority as the packages for which they
> are development tools.

some people won't want dev tools on their system - they just want a
workstation. the sets should make it easy for them to choose a system
like that.

imo sendmail vs smail should be an explicit choice given to the user.
i know smail is the debian standard but i have to go through the same
annoying procedure to replace it with sendmail on every debian system i
build.

nvi is also a minor issue. imo it's nowhere near as good as vim, and vim
should be the 'standard' debian vi clone.

see what i mean?  even just between you and me there is disagreement about
what is or should be 'standard'.


> > that's why i think that there should be around 5 (perhaps as many
> > as 10 or so) sets grouped roughly by function...network clients,
> > network servers, X, development stuff, games, etc.
>
> Network clients and servers are currently combined in one package
> (netstd), so that would be hard to separate.

true. very good point. ok, instead of having an "internet client" and
"internet server" set, have an "internet stuff" set which asks whether
they also want to run wu-ftpd and/or apache....they're the things i was
thinking about when i said 'internet server'.


> > small is good. not everyone has a 2gb drive dedicated to linux. many
> > newbies are just trying it out for the first time on a smallish
> > partition. people who want more than the 'bare minimum' can always
> > use dpkg or dselect to install extra stuff.
>
> On the other hand, many people just bought a big disk and just want to
> install something that works.  We should be able to accommodate both
> types.

yep.  you can choose one, some, or all of the sets.  you can have base +
internet stuff + development + X workstation + X dev + ....


craig


--
craig sanders
networking consultant                  Available for casual or contract
temporary autonomous zone              system administration tasks.


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