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| Would Gentoo Linux benifit from an install program? |
| No |
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50% |
[ 529 ] |
| Yes |
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28% |
[ 302 ] |
| Definatly! |
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14% |
[ 148 ] |
| Where do I send the money to get you to hurry up with it? |
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6% |
[ 69 ] |
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| Total Votes : 1048 |
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geniux
Veteran
Joined: 19 Feb 2004
Posts: 1400
Location: /home
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 Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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No, why? The whole Gentoo charm begins with the installation  .
And the http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml is one of the best written guides ever. Read it, print it, install Gentoo. |
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placeholder
Advocate
Joined: 07 Feb 2004
Posts: 2500
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| Posted: Sun May 16, 2004 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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| I say no because the installation of Gentoo is just one of the major parts of Gentoo. |
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chenko
n00b
Joined: 17 Dec 2003
Posts: 31
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 10:34 am Post subject: |
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Having one would be nice for the people who want to do say a Stage 3 GRP install, but making it optional would be a must  |
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MaxDamage
l33t
Joined: 03 Jan 2004
Posts: 650
Location: Oviedo, Spain
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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Just an idea: how about teaching the user to have links in a virtual terminal with the instructions and a shell in another one to do all the process? I liked the installation this way, switching between them, but perhaps other people doesn't know anything about links/virtual terminals/etc.
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Jerrac
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 22 Jun 2003
Posts: 111
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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| compu-tom wrote: | I agree that the learning effect is great w/o an install tool.
But having no such tool requires one to have a printed copy of the installation manual laying on the table (lack of internet access and available browsers at this stage of installation).
Most of the installation guide are decisions that have to be made by the installer. It also shows you the installation order of components. The resulting commands then aren't that difficult.
It therefor would be great to have at least an on-screen guide of this kind (for example): | Code: | * Hello, now it is time to decide which cron daemon should be installed
* There are: vcron, fcron, dcron
* A short description as decision helper follows:
* vcron: foo bar with advantages 1, 2, and 3
* fcron: bar foo with something special
* dcron: foo but with bar as well
* Recommendation: dcron
* Type "emerge <cron>" where you replace <cron> with your selection. |
Then after emerging the cron package, the next helping hand would be nice and so on. It's just not to get lost. This is like the help when making the kernel: Type make dep...
The learning benefit may be really high |
I haven't read all the posts in this topic yet, but I wanted to say something about the quoted post before I forgot.
I really like that idea. If I had had that when I was first installing, it would have been very nice and I would still have learned a lot, if not more.
As for a gui install, I think it would be useful. But it would need to stay seperate from the regular gentoo cd's. Like have gentoo-gui-whatever.iso files... That would be for people like my dad who just want to get it installed and usable, and don't have the time to learn the command line stuff. Yeah, I know that Mandrake is like that, but the RPM stuff is a pain. That is one of the main reasons I came to gentoo. I could actually get a program to install right the first try. Giving someone like my dad rpm's would be bad because he would try installing something a few times, have not work all those times, and go back to Windows.
I expect some of that has already been said... oh well.
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Radea
n00b
Joined: 08 May 2003
Posts: 59
Location: United States
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2004 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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| I always though of the lack of an installer as a feature, not a missing one. It helps the user familiarize himself with the OS a little bit before using it. |
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Match
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 117
Location: England
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| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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If I'd had the option of an installer, I'd have picked the installer.
As it is, I don't have the option and so have had to read the installation guide. In the process I have learnt absolutely tonnes about Gentoo and Linux in general. If given the option I'd probably have gone the easy way. If I'd gone the easy way the chances are I would have failed in my installation, as I'm going to be using a wireless card. It's through going through the installation process several times that I've been able to see that this may have been a problem and to discover how to solve it (I hope).
In other words, I'm glad there was no installation program other than bootstrap.sh, because with one I'd know next to nothing about Linux and would probably fail installing Gentoo. My installation begins in five days when my exams are over, and already I know ten times as much about Linux than if I'd used a distro with a proper install program. So I'm very thankful to Gentoo for *not* having the install program. I think this way rocks. |
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geordie
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 99
Location: Newcastle UK
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| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2004 7:07 pm Post subject: |
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No - it is better "handroll" the installation and learn through that process.
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Linux User No 315723 |
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pcrissman
n00b
Joined: 04 Oct 2003
Posts: 35
Location: MPLS, MN, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 10:02 pm Post subject: There is already an installer project listed on freshmeat |
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Didn't see this anywhere in the thread, so I hope it's not redundant.
Someone has already begun porting Anaconda (the redhat gui installer, of course) to install Gentoo. At the moment it sounds like there's still a fair bit of manual configuration to be done.
Personally, I think it's an interesting project. Choice is a must, though.
The freshmeat project is at http://freshmeat.net/projects/gentooinstaler/, homepage is at
http://gentoo.vidalinux.com/?q=node/view/35
Thought this might interest some |
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cbock
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
Posts: 149
Location: san diego
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| Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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i voted yes.
while i enjoyed a stage 2 install twice, i wish it wouldn't have taken so long WITH me sitting there. i'd have preferred knowing what my options where, passing them to a gui, then running it.
pcrissman, i checked that out a few weeks ago when i was looking for a gui installer. problem i had with gentooinstaller was that it only did stage 3 installs.  |
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mat74
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Jun 2004
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:22 pm Post subject: |
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| No from me. I think it would give people a wrong idea about dealing with problems. I think its a big advantage of gentoo to actually get people to read docus, a technique which comes in handy in a multitude of situations when problems occur. Btw I never read a better howto than the one about the installation on gentoo.org. Wouldn't want to miss that. |
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Kernel_Klink
n00b
Joined: 18 Jun 2004
Posts: 17
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| Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 8:01 am Post subject: |
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| Sven Vermeulen wrote: | | One of the advantages of not having an install script is that the users get to know Portage from the beginning, and because of the well-written Installation Guide they know how they can administer it using emerge. If you give the users an installationprocess, they don't know (in the beginning) how to work with Portage/emerge, and since they already have a working system, they tend to try things on their own, f****ing up things and then asking questions. That makes it a little more difficult to debug their questions. Not that I am against users that try before ask, this is just an observation (been there, done that). |
Which is why I switched to gentoo. If I wanted it done for me I would use Mandrake.
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Gentoo, it is a way of life. |
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rossk
n00b
Joined: 15 Jun 2004
Posts: 20
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
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| Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 12:33 am Post subject: |
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| I think it's important to mention that Gentoo already gives users choices between how easy they want the installation to be. If the Gentoo project was all about excluding non-power users, then why do we have Stage 2 and 3 installations? Why dont we _just_ have stage 1? |
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thechris
Veteran
Joined: 12 Oct 2003
Posts: 1203
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| Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 5:23 am Post subject: |
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hmm, well i think you should have an included install script of some type.
as i see it, the scripts could be placed into 3 parts --
1.) pre-install -- attempts to set up filesystems and such, along with setting up fstab, hosts, hostname, dnsdominame, raidtab, rc.conf, and a few others first. if you could do menuconfig, then you could make later stuff easier! basically it'd be 15 minutes of config.
2.) post chroot -- attempts to do the stage1 to stage3 stuff, then compile a kernel, then setup grub and other stuff.
3.) after reboot -- basically an emerge script for X, gnome, nvidia, firefox, and a bunch of other stuff.
but the catch is to make the script modular and so the user is forced to tweak them a little. i for one am not overly appreciative of the command by command method of install, and as everyone suggest in open-source, i'm attempting to change it. IMO, even a scripted type command-by-command type install could be nice. imagine having instructions printed out by typing:
cat /var/next
and such. in fact, i'm fairly sure this would be possible becuase the handbook is XML based. |
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Nefarius
n00b
Joined: 03 Apr 2004
Posts: 48
Location: Graz, Austria
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| Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 10:28 am Post subject: |
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Gentoo doesn't *need* an installer...
But as Linux and especially Gentoo is all about the freedom of choice it should and will have one
And its use should and will of course be optional
And it will be great for many people who like the idea of Gentoo but are a little afraid because of what thy might have heard or read
And some people here on the forum will hate it and not accept it even though it will be optional
And as it will broaden the options it will add to the number of users
And it will lead us one step closer to global dom...
um...
...no, I'm not crazy, it's just my mind...
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