Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 07:25, Andy Green wrote:
> > > hear them - the install everthing voices were universally dismissed by
> > > those that didn't want it.
> >
> > What should have happened differently? Personally I would get rid of
> > the installer completely, it's a pervy one-shot bag of weirdness.
>
> While I've argued a little for the usefulness of 'everything', what
> I really think is needed is a simple facility to allow anyone
> to 'share' their current configuration. That is, anyone who
> has installed a set of programs that they consider useful for
> some particular purpose should have a push-button-simple way
> to export the yum repositories and list of rpm packages so
> that anyone else could duplicate that exact setup with a
> single command or equivalent push-button. Also to clone
> machines, you would do a miminal install - just enough to
> run yum and this automation package or even better make it
> work from a bootable CD and do a complete install to match
> an existing machine. Then we need to have a few dozen experts
> upload their lists along with a description of the purpose
> of the machines.
>
"Bells and whistles", intellegently added makes for an easier,
quicker, and more productive installation. It should be simple
and intuitive that perhaps your 5 year old kid might be able to
embarass even the most seasoned professional installer :-p
Things like list selections and deselections; use the shift
key (mouse and/or curses) to make a start-end selection, a
control-key (mouse and/or curses) to add/remove a specific
selection in the list. Many smart OS vendors provide this
and it is good business and good sense. The specific package
selections is up to the installer, however if features below
were available, those choices can be controlled, perhaps.
WISHLIST (Features):
===========================================================
(1) User defined package location source(s):
(a) Local RPM directory(s),
(b) from CD,
(c) from Internet (download speed from fastest to slowest),
(i) URL link(s)
(ii) Default mirror(s)
(2) Vendor supplied or User defined RPM package list(s):
(a) Source location:
[same list perhaps as in (1)(a-c)]
If there is anything else, append to the above list and post
it. At least this MIGHT get the developers attention to a
wish list should they decide to act and implement the above
suggestions hopefully by consensus.
Note: (1) above is supported by most professional OS package
installers. I have not seen this with Linux package installers
and it is sorely needed IMHO.
My $0.02 contribution.
Dan
