whats the reason behind not creating an easy installer

[Archangel1]

[wilburpan]

[Sven Vermeulen]

Well, we already have a section for "Optional: Viewing Documentation while Installing" in the Gentoo Handbook. It's quite easy to add a paragraph that you can also run irssi and such in other terminals.

[eldados]

Don't understand what the problem is making a gui install, if you guys are talking about the ability to learn the inside of linux and the power through the CLI why do you at the same time make emerge so easy and great to use? why instead of typing emerge k3b don't you go to the k3b site download the source code, ./configure it with your flags, make and make install and making sure you have read all about the libraries needed, tham going and doing the same thing for each and every packge needed?? is it too much work? but you learn so much from it!
In the handbook you talk about how gentoo is all about options, and one can bootstrap or do a GRP, so why not CLI install or GUI install?
What's the big deal about it really? do some people feel like their ego might get hurt in the process of gui install? I'm sure these people don't use portage as well
Gentoo is great, making life so much easier to upgrade a system or install new software, but it could be better making an easy install.
..."options it's all about options" put your clicks where your mouth is...
peace to all.

[feld]

i learned a TON by installing it, failing, installing again for fun, breaking it, and installing with some good 'flags.

i dont think i'd know half as much as i do if i wouldnt have used Gentoo.

btw, my previous linux experience: week or two TOTAL of mandrake and suse. just screwed with them every now and then.

heard about Gentoo, kept getting interested everytime i read about it.

finally said SCREW IT! If i know as much about computers as i think i do, i can master this and get this running! so i printed the manual and lo and behold i havent booted into windows for my OWN personal pleasure (if thats what you'd call it...) in over a month. happy as can be, especially since my goal is to be a network admin over linux.... learnin every day!



-Feld

[eldados]

feld,
good on you! I did the same thing and learned lots, but it's your choise to do a CLI install. If you had to choose between a GUI or CLI install what would you choose? and what would Joe Block choose?
Please give us the option to choose...
(oh, and before any smart guy out there says "you have a choise between Gentoo and Fedora" this is not what it's about)

[Deranger]

[eldados]

I'm installing Vida Linux and after installing Gentoo a few times for p3 and athlon 64, I had enough of installing for a week, configuring the system for a few more weeks (my girlfried started to worry )
I want a sinple easy install my 686 or x64 flags are in place and install takes 30 minutes! that's what I want now, a sysyem that works right away.
have a look at Yoper. installes in 15 minutes and the 686 runs faster than my Gentoo64!
so go on fiddle with your computer for another 10 years if you like
Maybe people are too afraid to have a working system with very little fiddeling??? I wonder

[SnEptUne]

[virtual]

Hi,

As I was reading the posts on this page I started remembering the old UNIX days.

UNIX and therefore Linux is a developers OS (not hackers) there was a strategy in choosing the command names awk, and ls and ....

There were two main reasons and one of them were to make them less understandable for users who didn't realy know what they were doing, in other words scare them away. I know how this sounds today but it's true.

When you look at all the commands and all the flags you will soon see that they are a set of tools which is heaven for a developer, take a look at the advanced shell scripts you can make and compare this to bat files in windows (ha ha ha).

Now for the user, users are supposed to use applications made on this wonderful system for example KDE, GNOME and all the apps. like OO, or KOffice... and on and on..

The interaction with the system is the same for a user, logon..click an icon and start your wordproccessor..click an icon to print...logoff.

The real problem is that many users have been using windows and in this environment the user has become "the system administrator" with commands he/she thinks they understand.
Just look at what a user can do in the control panel everything is so "easy" it's made too look that way but when a problem arises there are two main ways these get solved reboot, and reinstall (if reboot didn't work).

So there is a conflict new users want it easy they have become used to this, and they realy don't know what they miss, I mean they realy don't know (this is not a joke).

Let's look at one example, use 2 to 3 days installing Gentoo by the book ( most of the time is used waiting for the compile to finish ) then never reinstall again. This new consept is so unthinkable they just don't belive it. How many reinstalls will they have done with another Linux distro or windows by the next 3 years. There is nothing more catastrophic than reinstalling in a production environment, and the more users are on the system the worse it gets. Something always goes wrong, maybe not much but always some little thing. Imagine always beeing up to date like with Gentoo.

This is why (my view) the installer is not a priority, the documentation is, and it's VERY good.
The important part is that you as a new user try to learn this new way of doing things, it can be frustrating at the start but give it a couple of months and if computers/linux intrests you, you will fall in love with Gentoo, it's natures way, just accept it. I come from a Windows, CTOS, System V, AIX, SCO, RedHat and Mandrake background and love Gentoo.
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The roots of education are bitter but it's fruit is sweet.

[miqorz]

After watching Revolution OS I'm more firm in my stance, Every OS needs and equilibrium of sorts.

There are painfully easy to use distros (Mandrake, Redhat.) And those set aside to scratch a certain niche. (Gentoo, Crux.) why blend them together in something that will ultimately turn to shit?

I mean, I'd never give gentoo to say my mom nor would I ever put it on a server.

It's there for a certain reason and a gui installer just doesn't fit into that niche.

If you need a gui installer. maybe gentoo isn't for you.

[numerodix]

What I think some users may like is a quicker (simpler) way to install Gentoo while still having the benefits of portage and everything else. The reason being that the install process can seem a little long and complicated for someone who just wants to try it and if you happen to own unpopular hardware, getting your network up et al can be confusing. I think once you have a base system working, maybe some are then more motivated to start tweaking it and learning about it because you're over that initial bump in the road.

Thus VidaLinux sounds like a great idea, in fact I'm gonna try it and see whether it can do a good job.

One thing that was already mentioned that I find particularly offensive in gui/curses installers is when they either crash midway or don't give you an option to go back on your choices. Very frustrating.
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[wilburpan]

[SebastianJ]

I can agree on that gentoo wouldn't be gentoo without it's manual. And for any person new to linux I'd recommend doing a Gentoos install according to the manual, to learn stuff like the fstab and other basic linux features.

But last time I installed Gentoo it was because I wanted the latest system without any problems, and as a true Windows I'd rather reinstall and get stuff right than spending twce the time doing tricks avoid reinstall.
And then I really missed some automation, most of the time I had to retype stuff that wath in the manual charecter by charecter, I'd estimate it to that it toock half an hour to an hour in time, for something that could have taken about a minute!

So what I'd want, would be an half-automated install, suggesting each command line, based on some input I've made before about installpaths and such, to me to accept or not accept based on some basic information also posted for me to review. And if you want it to be useable for total newbies too, you could have the whole manual presented, with automatic fill in of command lines.

I agree that making an GUI probably is not especially important since it probably would take uneccescary time to develop. But an Interactive UI with the choice to put in your own commands at any time wouldn't be wrong IMO.

One thing I have noticed with Gentoo is that some users seamingly want to scare away newbies telling them that Gento is an hard distro only for experienced users. In my eyes it is just the opposite. I couldn't recomend any distro more than Gentoo. Gentoo is in no way hard. Mostly due to the good documentation and the very simple-to-use portage.
And also I get a feeling that some think a successful install of Gentoo prooves that you are a real hacker, and that having a newbie-friendly gui would make them less cool as then everyone could install Gentoo. I hate to have to break this for you but: installing Gentoo is everyting but a proof of you being elite or a hacker! If you want something among those lines I'd guess that LFS would be a better choice, but Gentoo? NO!

And that isn't Gentoos goal either, being a hard-ass distro for all cool hackers only using CLI, so stop bitching about it and read The Philosophy of Gentoo and realise that what Gentoo is about is Choice and that means that a user should be able to do a nice simple hand-holded install or a on-helped only-CLI-install just as he wants to. I really hope that that Philosophy still is there among the deveopers, since that is just what I like about Gentoo!
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My goal is to some day somewere succeed in installing a fully working linux.

[piffle]

[miqorz]

[Jakub]

I used to think that a graphical install option would be a nice idea but I've changed my mind. Why? Because people will have to, sooner or later, learn to use the command line. Say, you have a problem with emerging something. You get the advice on the forums to recompile the kernel - and they assure you it will solve your problem. You would do it because you really need that app but you have no idea what a kernel is, as you've never compiled one.

Or, shall we say, the graphical install has finished. All went great. But then you notice that your sound doesn't work. You visit the forums and somebody tells you to edit some bizarre file in /etc/modules.d/alsa. But the problem is you do not know how to use a graphical editor as root. 'And it all seems so stupid to have to edit all those damn files, just look at suse or mandrake, how easy they are. Gentoo is great, but shouldn't there be some control centre to modify all those files with several clicks? Like the one in mandrake?'

So, my personal opinion is that it's great that the newbs have to go through the manual console install because they learn a lot (even if they just blindly type in what the manual says, it's still learning, it's easier the second time, and the third time you do it, you begin to grasp what you're actually doing).

An automatic (not necessarily graphcal) install would be good for the more advanced users who do many installs (admittedly, it is boring when you install gentoo on the twentieth box).

[Deranger]

[SebastianJ]

[denstark]

[SebastianJ]

[Dolio]

[chiatello]

to make an easy installer , it would have to ask the same amount of questions as you do already with gentoo, so it wouldnt really be much simpler


after all, the install guide is very clear, and well documented


also with a installer , it would be less flexible



installing with a install script or whatnot wouldnt speed up compile times , so it would still take a day or two to get a fully functioning system


the reason i think gentoo doesnt have a default install script, is because it doesn't really make things that much faster and/or easier (if you have your install guide printed out )



onlly thing that sucks about the current no-installer deal, is that if you are new to gentoo and you miss one little spot of the install guide, your install might not work at all (happened to me on my first, and.. second install lol )

[SebastianJ]

[ciaranm]

No installer because it helps keeps the eejits out, which means we get less stuff like this...