New installer WTF!?

[droidhacker]

Ok, I grant that it says its only 80% completed, but I have to say that on TC6, its a nightmare.

First screen makes sense. Language.
Second screen is about networking. Choose wifi, nowhere to add passphrase? This screen is obviously not completed, but I can't figure out WHY it exists.


And then... the "WTF?" screen. If there are three things with an "!" that need to be completed prior to installation, wouldn't it be better to progress through them and then conclude with an option to "make additional customizations" than to show the "WTF?" screen? Also, its an installation, what's with all the non-mandatory options on the "WTF?" screen? Get them out of my way into an "advanced options" screen.

-- software selection. SELECT A REASONABLE DEFAULT CONFIGURATION. I've been using Fedora since FC3, and I'm lost on this page. So I select a bunch of stuff just to satisfy the installer. A "Next" button would be nice here, not just the "BACK" button (which feels like going... BACK).

-- network configuration... didn't I just do that on the second screen? The hell do I need to do it again for?

-- again with the "next" button vs "back" button.

-- install destination. I can selectl a disk, but then it doesn't tell me what to I can do with this disk. First time through, I tried to review and modify partitioning.. didn't work, crashed. I'll assume that that's another part of the missing 20%. At least this section has a "continue" button.

** Right, OK, it doesn't seem to be POSSIBLE to complete an installation without having a HARD WIRED INTERNET CONNECTION. You can't use wifi (never prompts for passphrase), and for whatever unreasonable reason, it won't let you SKIP the network setup part. What about all those people who don't HAVE a network? They need to buy a network switch just to pretend to have a network?

** Ok, so if there is anything on the selected install disk at the beginning of the process, this installer will automatically obliterate EVERYTHING from it. Fortunately, that's what I wanted to do with it. If I didn't, then it would be seriously NOT COOL.


In the off chance that the parties responsible for this "installer" will visit this forum, suggestions;

1) Network should NOT be required for installation.
2) Mandatory steps should be performed on a "next", "next", "next" basis, not selected from a "WTF?" menu.
3) AFTER the mandatory steps, give the user the option to perform additional customization. Show them a screen that says "Ready to perform installation." with a button that says "Advanced Customization", and another button that says "Go for it".
4) Make a default selection for a standard gnome desktop.
5) Buttons on the right side of the screen labelled as "next" or "continue" are a lot more intuitive than buttons on the left side of the screen that are labelled "back" when your objective is to progress FORWARD in the installation process.
6) Some means of controlling the disk partitioning, and dont obliterate the entire disk by default.

Hopefully, most of that will be dealt with in the remaining 20%. If not, expect a lot of "WTF?"'s.

At the moment, looks like this installer was from the same group responsible for gnome3.

---------- Post added at 03:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:03 PM ----------

Note: I could see getting "used to" the installer, but above are my first impressions, you know, that part that locks in or drives away potential new customers. If I was a wondoze noob, I'd be driven away by that. Hate to say it, but even the wondoze installer is more intuitive than this mess, and I've always hated the wondoze installer for being unintuitive, long, and slow.

---------- Post added at 03:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:06 PM ----------

And then when you finally finish installation and reboot, you get... TEXT LOGIN PROMPT.
Wonder what the default root password is.....?

Good thing for rebooting into runlevel 1.

[smr54]

I don't like it either, but in fairness, it's still very much alpha.

[nonamedotc]

There has been a long winding discussion going about bugs in F18 Alpha (in general), the installer (in particular), the rationale behind some of the design aspects in the new anaconda UI, etc under this thread - http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=283159 - particularly the last few pages .... Take a look (if interested). Cheers.

There are also quite a few bug reports filed on bugzilla about anaconda. Some of them are getting fixed, other don't know ...

[DBelton]

Wait a minute.. You mentioned TC6?? Why aren't you using the official alpha?

But some of those issues are still in the alpha.

And the part about it requiring network for the install is probably due to not unchecking the box on the install media screen where it defaults to using the online repo versus using the local repo on the install media. Stupid default in my opinion, since I have to install media right there. If I had wanted to install from the online repo, I would have grabbed a network install image.

[chrismurphy]

Originally Posted by DBelton

Stupid default in my opinion, since I have to install media right there. If I had wanted to install from the online repo, I would have grabbed a network install image.

I'm willing to bet it's a bug, but I'm too lazy to go look for it. I say this because a.) it's wholly illogical and likely undesirable by default; b.) this same sort of behavior happened by default in F17 alpha more than once, maybe even a beta build or two, and it was a bug.

As for newui's UI, it was frozen a while ago for alpha and they've done a lot more work apparently for beta branch since then. So come beta TC's we probably will see lots of changes. I'm certainly finding the UI for RAID, LVM and btrfs beyond confusing - not least of which is that a lot of the UI wasn't connected underneath so poking it with a stick was as revealing as the UI.

Rest assured it'll get better! :-D (Kinda difficult not to...)

[DBelton]

Yea.. When it's at the bottom, the only way to go is up

Seriously, it is shaping up pretty well, but the outstanding bugs are really noticeable ones in critical areas. That kinda makes the entire thing look bad.

I'm still not too happy about them taking out the capability of installing more than one desktop and customizing the packages installed, but I guess I'll have to live with that one.

[stevea]

Originally Posted by droidhacker

[...]
And then... the "WTF?" screen. If there are three things with an "!" that need to be completed prior to installation, wouldn't it be better to progress through them and then conclude with an option to "make additional customizations" than to show the "WTF?" screen? Also, its an installation, what's with all the non-mandatory options on the "WTF?" screen? Get them out of my way into an "advanced options" screen.

No ! That would be worse IMO. The top MENU (aka WTF) screen is better than a serialized install screen. It's truly bad when you are FORCED to go through the config in a fixed order A, B, C, ... b/c when you get halfway through you realize, whoops - I didn't realize XXX, so I'd better reboot and try again. So you basically have to learn the serial installer with several tries, THEN you can install. Yes you could go back a bit, but then you might lose context and have to repeat.

With the F18 2-tier install menu screen you can just go back to the other step and re-do it. You can also skip the optional configs. It's good and creates a better framework for more detailed future install-configs.

Another point - you cant really serialize when you have alternative conflicting configs. Say you want to config SMTP (no - it's not on the WTF page) but if you just config'ed postfix then you obviously don't want sendmail. Or authentication methods, or a choice of SELinux policies or chronyd vs ntpd, or ... . The new 2-tier menu config screen opens the door for a better future.

-- software selection. SELECT A REASONABLE DEFAULT CONFIGURATION. I've been using Fedora since FC3, and I'm lost on this page.

Agreed - it's not good. There are really so many packages that we need a 3-4 tier package selection scheme. We need an axe and a scalpel level of selections. Also it would be nice to search for packages rather than hunt&guess as in the old installer.

Still, there is a claim that the old package selection scheme had problems, and needed replacement. This F18 one is rough and crude, but serviceable.

So I select a bunch of stuff just to satisfy the installer. A "Next" button would be nice here, not just the "BACK" button (which feels like going... BACK).

Nah ! Where does "NEXT" take you when you are traversing a tree ? May as well select the next random config page.
Maybe we need an expert mode..

I'd like some way to introduce a little stored date into the new config. Like pull an old 'etc{passwd,groups} files from the net and create the accounts. Or examine an old /etc/fstab and pull the support for the file-sys types and the distributed file systems (samba, nfs, gluster ..).

-- install destination. I can selectl a disk, but then it doesn't tell me what to I can do

Agreed. Also the disk-heathen or whatever they call the successor to disk-druid is scary-uninformative. Uhh I guess I have "8012mb" instead of "8002mb" and it blows up to a reboot. Even the syntax is not explained onlline. Needs work.

I didn't try a wifi install but the wired required zero manual config here.
I think the hostname should be set before bringing the network up, but that's small change.


You have some valid points.

[DBelton]

The bug about trying to allocate more space than you have available causing anaconda to puke all over the place and require a reboot bug is a known one, and was known before the alpha was released. I still believe they should have delayed the alpha until that portion of anaconda was working better, but I'm just a user so my thoughts don't count.

At least that bug isn't as bad as the one that will totally wipe your drive, even if you have other OS's on it, though (That they also knew about before the alpha release)

In my opinion, the overall design of the new installer is a good one. As steve pointed out, the hub/spoke arrangement is a better design than the old serial flow installer.

And I too agree that the old anaconda had some problems and a re-write was pretty much necessary.

Now if they can get the disk partitioning fixed, it has potential as the rest of the issues are pretty minor ones.

[stevea]

Originally Posted by DBelton

If I had wanted to install from the online repo, I would have grabbed a network install image.

Maybe its a decent default but ...
Really ? My experience is that 2 weeks after a release there is so much update material that I'd much rather install from repo instead of install from DVD then update. IIRC the older scheme would install from repo only if it had a newer rev than the DVD.

[DBelton]

I haven't tried seeing if you could use the local repo, but also the online repos as well to see if it gave results similar to the old installer that you mentioned.

That is really how I would prefer to do most of my installs. I just don't want the installer to be pulling every package down from the online repo while trying to install, though. That would really slow down the install.

It's really just a tradeoff on the time, though. If it downloads while installing, you can't use the machine for anything else. If you install from the local media, then update after the install, you can at least be doing a few things while it's updating. I find that I can use that time to make some of my initial changes, like setting up my /etc/fstab /etc/exports, etc...

[stevea]

I seem to recall installing F12 or F13 from DVD a month+ after release, then the very first yum upgrade approached 2GB ! Sort of defeats the point of downloading a 4GB DVD image.

[chrismurphy]

IMO netinstall or BFO are the way to do it. If you do more than a few installations (additional machines or lots of redos) it might make sense to build your own local mirror. I'm kinda curious if it's possible to build your own local partial mirror. I don't know what percentage of total in repos, but it's not a lot. Less than a gig.

[smr54]

I agree that netinstall is best if you have a fast network. We forget though that there are lots of people with bandwidth caps or poor connections.

Note that one discussion I've seen on the testing list is replacing the Back button with Done, which would probably make more sense to most people.

[Apostate]

Is there any way to install f18 to a free space partition on a drive? This was possible with f17.

[DBelton]

Originally Posted by stevea

I seem to recall installing F12 or F13 from DVD a month+ after release, then the very first yum upgrade approached 2GB ! Sort of defeats the point of downloading a 4GB DVD image.

Oh yes.. Now I totally agree there. If it's very long after the release, then you are much better off installing from the online repo, preferably using the netinstall of BFO as chrismurphy states.

But I normally install before the final release, and usually grab the latest install image, so there aren't as many updates lingering in the online repos.

There was someone (I believe it's Ben Williams??) that puts out some updated install images throughout the release cycle, but you can't count on those being done at set intervals or even done at all.