Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Jeff Vian wrote:
I would agree on the wish for an option to select a group and expect all
within it to be installed. As examples, mysql and postresql would be
nice for that. With FC4 less than half the individual packages for those
groups were installed by default and it was time consuming to do the
full groups. However, IIRC the installer has never allowed selecting an
entire group with a single check mark. Groups can be installed in
entirety from the command line with yum.
Both Anaconda and Pirut allows groups of packages to be installed.
Optional components arent selected within the groups by default but
the major packages including MySQL and PostgreSQL is selected within
the group usually.
Just a further note on comparisons with "Windows" (or whatever you
want to call it). As far as adding components of Windows goes, it
is done by "groups", where checking a group appears to install only
the default components of the group. To really find out what is
installed needs a lot of selecting and clicking of the "details" button.
The functionality sounds similar to what has been described for
anaconda, but perhaps with a different user interface.
But this I think misses the point. What I described above is for
only the stuff that comes on the single Windows CD. When I put
Microsoft Office on the system (two more CDs and much more money)
I was presented with a totally different installer with its own
scheme for selecting components. And then the next piece of
commercial software had a different thing again.
Last I looked, FC5T3 had 5 CDs full of stuff. Servers, office
tools, photo editors, etc. etc. etc. All installable with one
installer. Perhaps a few bumps. (A project for this week is
to install a FC5T3 on a lab machine replacing an FC4 machine
that "bit the dust". We normally don't install during a college
term unless something like this happens.) So I'll reserve
comments on the user interface for this until I have tried it.
But I think that Fedora is breaking ground far ahead of Microsoft
to even have an installer and updater that covers such a large
collection of the applications in addition to the base OS.
And the large collection of available packages (CDs and various
repositories) does indeed create a user interface challenge that
is being tackled by the installer and updater application people.
