[indiana-discuss] Interesting comments regarding Indiana and OpenSolaris vs Linux instal

[Gueven Bay]

I will repeat it over and over: The reasons why the install process of Solaris in this "review" got bad points are that the user had no experience in Solaris _and_ the Fedora installer has more eye-candy.

You can make it yourself clear by looking at the screenshots and seeing that the install process is to 90% the same tasks. 
Heck, we are speaking here about Unix-like systems. And they have ALL the same (or very similar) system architecture and so the same (or similar) install process:
1) partition (slice and partition)
2) make some minor customization, for example choose language (but that is unimportant, it is just more user friendly, you can set the language and localization later when the system runs)
3) install - that is untar and copy - the base system
4) install - that is untar and copy - some additional apps
(in between the steps 3 and 4 and also in between the installation of the various packages dependent on the operating system you have to run some post install scripts which in most cases copy and "sed" some data/files around) 
5) set passwords for initial - at least root - user(s)
6) finished - reboot into new system -


The solution to this is forget the eye-candy and educate the users. (I say this because I can imagine the thinking of the Indiana community:" Let's copy the Anaconda system over to OpenSolaris.")

Educate them, not copy Ubuntu for Solaris, please. 
Why doesn't anyone understand this?
Why do we all need flashy installers even when the process is to 90% of the steps the same?

In all media activities the Linux users are described in comparison to the Windows users as "technologically knowledged". And in this case (from the article, paragraph 1):
" ... but for a Linux or Windows user it could prove to be a bit challenging. "
Aha, suddenly, because of lack of eye-candy this system (OpenSolaris) is much,much more complicated. 

Tell me, how eye-candy would solve this? At least if you don't change the system architecture to exactly the same to Fedora so that you can install OpenSolaris with Anaconda. 
But education is the solution.

I would even vote to remove all eye-candy from the first releases of Indiana - I mean here the installer not the included WM that runs later on the installed system - and go for a OpenBSD like installer just to make the users "strong" (in knowledge).

(As a side point: I am very, very irritated about this ongoing process to hide more and more from the user in the Unix-like systems. We, the users (end-users, admins and devs alike), always told all who listened that one pro of Unix-like systems is that every process - from the installation to the ongoing monitoring of network - is user "readable". 
But this "Ubuntuization" of the Linux and now even the OpenSolaris land will not end in a good goal.)

Ohh, man...
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This message posted from opensolaris.org