Quick poll

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 21:24 -0500, David A. Bandel wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:43 AM, C M Reinehr <cmr at amsent.com> wrote:
> > On Sun 05 October 2008 09:37, David A. Bandel wrote:
> >> Folks,
> >>
> >> A couple of quick questions:
> >>
> 
> I want to take a minute to thank all who responded.  Looks like those
> of us with more than one or two headless boxes that most would call
> servers have similar setups and install in more or less similar ways
> -- i.e., we look for the time-saving short cuts.
> 
> These "shortcuts" mostly aren't available to those who don't have
> multiple systems and would be installing one machine at one location,
> so this majority would just install locally sitting and "enjoying" the
> experience that would bore the rest of us to death (or at least be
> considered a waste of time).
> 
> I appreciate the comments and thought put into them.  Looks like I'm
> not far off the beaten track at all.  I may be less impressed by
> pretty graphics than the rest -- guess when I see eye candy I tend to
> start taking a real critical look at what maybe wasn't paid attention
> to at the expense of the eye candy.

Not to start a distro war, but I just installed the latest Fedora. I
really disliked their graphical install. Too much was already decided.
It is ok if the way to make changes from these defaults is made obvious.
I do not feel this was the case with their graphical install. OTOH, I
think openSUSE are striking the right balance. Like giving you the
option of letting the installer figure out everything, or having the
installer take you through things. You have the level of control you
want. I also thought the FC package selection was mysterious. Seemed to
me that I could only install very coarse grained sets of packages. I
must have missed the obvious place where one could be more specific.
Does the FC installer have a package search option to let you find
specific packages during install. The whole point of a graphical
event-driven interface is that the paradigm makes it easier to make the
most relevant options accessible to the user without having to resort to
searching menus. Clicking on obscure icons to find basic things, like
the level of control you can have over the install - which is perhaps
one of the most relevant install options, obviates the whole reason for
a gui application. In any event, it installed over 3000 packages and
took a very long time.

I remain an openSUSE fan. I think Fedora really dumbed down their
installer. Makes me suspicious of the rest of the system control
utilities. I will explore those next. They are, after all, more
important than the once-used install system.

-- 
Roger Oberholtzer

OPQ Systems / Ramböll RST

Ramböll Sverige AB
Kapellgränd 7
P.O. Box 4205
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And remember:

It is RSofT and there is always something under construction. 
It is like talking about large city with all constructions finished. 
Not impossible, but very unlikely.