Re: Some thoughts on SEUL

[The Thought Assassin <assassin@sleepless.south.networx.net.au>]

Truly sick of this thread:)
hopefully i can lay it to rest.
Almost certain this man was using infomagic distribution, in which case
the Debian install really doesn't count as one.


> DEBIAN:
> The list has been promulgating the benifits of Debian dselect.  
No. We have been promulgating the benefits of the .deb format, and (to an
extent) dpkg. dselect, while a little more functional than glint, is far
from new-user-friendly. It won't be the default frontend for much longer,
though.


> interface suffers from lack of user friendliness.  For those that don't have
> Debian's dselect it basically presents you with a screen that lists all 
> available programs (also called packages) on the CD-Rom. The interface, as
> mentioned above gives a listing of all the packages available on the CD, 
> but at least to me, in a vary strange manner.  
Seems pretty logical to me, certainly compared to redhat's grouping of
packages. To my knowledge the new front-end does not present one with as
much information by default, which is certainly less daunting for a first
install, though irritating to the old hand.

> When attempting to install a package after the basic install all
> uninstalled packages are listed last, by major grouping (which also seems to
> be the directories on the CD-ROM).  This was somewhat of an annoyance to me
> because I found it difficult to find what I wanted to install.
OK, so more user error for us to patch around. dselect could do with more
in-your-face documentation perhaps? well, no, let the new front-end do
that, and keep dselect the way it is - an unencumbering tool for the
experienced. 

> Next point, the vaulted dependencies.  I don't understand this at all. 
Ok, more enduser problems stemming from the extra power of the
package-managing system.... Flexibility comes at a cost - more needs to be
done to help the new user distinguish between the core functionality and
the extra features that they won't want to use at first.
again, the dselect I/dselect II  divide, I suspect.

> I had assumed that once you installed a program it would work, alas this is
> not the case. For example, after doing a basic install that included X, I
> couldn't get X started. Don't know why, but there you go.
Well, doing a stock-standard basic install will get X started for you.
Certainly it would seem we need to do a better job of saying "hands off
this bit if you don't know what it does"

> Redhat Unlike Debian dumps you right into X so it appears that the
> dependencies work better in Redhat than they do in Debian.
Keyword: Appears.
Wait til you want to get under the hood.... you will curse the facade.
Remember also that Debian, unlike redhat, is also aimed at server, or even
embedded, deployment. This means one can't require the user to use X.

> Where Debian requires that you have up to 8 3.5 disks set aside 
More user error. Debian will boot directly from CDROM. If your board won't
boot from CD, then you need one floppy. If you want to do an install via
FTP, you will need 5 disks. Oh, ok, there are 8 disks these days...... I
think there ought be an older,smaller base-set on there for those who want
it. 
Perhaps what Gregory says is true of the infomagic CD though? 

> Redhat lets you install from the CD-ROM (through the use of scripts that
> last of which runs loadlin).  This is a good idea (TM) and should be
> incorporated into SEUL.  
But Debian already does it, so I don't suppose we need worry about that.

> Once the basic installation(s) has been completed Debian dumps you on the
> command line whereas Redhat dumps you into X.
Yes, but you specifically changed from the default settings and chose this 
while installing, so you can hardly blame debian. I am almost certain that
redhat will also let you drop to a command prompt after install if you so
desire. I might be wrong. I might also be wrong about whether infomagic
has a working copy of X....

> (a small gripe here, both Debian and Redhat do not use the colorize
> version of LS which is a bummer)
if you want colour-ls to run before you have run dselect/glint for the
first time, then you are looking at 9 disks instead of 8 :)
Quite rightly, both distribs make it an option, not a default.

> I don't know if I installed Debian correctly or not
You didn't. Otoh, if this was the infomagic distribution, it could well 
be argued that one cannot install it correctly - and you did better
with it the first time than I did. Congrats.
(I was hampered by my prior experience with debian which led me to expect
everything would work :)

-Greg(seriously suspecting he has only made this thread stronger....)