On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 13:12 +0000, Anne Wilson wrote: > On Thursday 19 Jan 2006 12:01, Tim wrote: > > Tim: > > >> Why do people do this? > > > > Anne Wilson: > > > Because it is the first time they have encountered an ISO image. > > > Very many people make the mistake of copying the image to a disk, > > > first time around. Someone has to explain what it is, and how it's > > > handled differently - just once - and the problem disappears. > > > Everybody starts somewhere. > > > > I can understand burning the ISO as a file to a disc, as a mistake. > > But considering the steps that you go though to get your hands on an > > ISO (reading pages, finding the ISO, working out which one you should > > get, etc.), do they really miss something saying burn a disc from > > this image file? > > > I don't think it would necessarily be understood if it did. I'm > assuming that in most cases they are coming from a windows world and > point-and-click burning apps. > Even the windows world has the concept of a disk image, vs the disk contents. This is IMO a willful ignorance, fostered by an OS and applications that assume you don't want/know how to think. > > Should the top of the Fedora page listing the ISO files say, "these > > are 'image' files, burn a disc from them, don't unpack the contents > > and copy them to a disc"? Could it be made damn-fool-proof? ;-) > > > Nothing is every fool-proof :-) Maybe a link to some 'First time users' > instructions'? I'm guessing that instructions on where to find 'Burn > an image' or similar on Nero and Roxio would sort out 99% of burning > problems. > Impossible! Those apps change the menu structure almost as often as I change clothes! (At least with every revision.) How would you keep your instructions current with the application? > > Though, to be fair, I've seen a couple of Windows CD-burning > > applications that give you no option to burn from an image, and a few > > that hide the ability. > > > I haven't seen too many of those apps, but the ones I have seen don't > make the image-burn too obvious. > > I'm not trying to be smart-ass, it's just that for many newbies it's a > completely new concept. IMO a lot of duplication of effort in helping > these people could be avoided by making provision for them clearly > available linked from the download page. > I concur, and would like to add that IMHO *nothing* can force a person to read instructions until after they try what they think is correct and hit a brick wall because they did it wrong. Those who _know_ they are not all-knowing are the minority and seldom have problems. The majority don't understand how little they know/understand and those are the ones who fail to read or ask until after they broke it.
