[gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Paul de Vrieze]

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Hi all,

The report of yesterday's desktop-research meeting can be found at:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/meeting_reports.xml#doc_chap2

We are still looking for volunteers so if you want to help a hand please 
contact the lead of the specific research effort you are interested in. 
(This is also open for non-dev's)

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Mario Udina]

> The report of yesterday's desktop-research meeting can be found at:
> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/meeting_reports.xml#doc_chap2
> 
> We are still looking for volunteers so if you want to help a hand please 
> contact the lead of the specific research effort you are interested in. 
> (This is also open for non-dev's)
> 
> Paul

Hello!

I would like to participate but would like to know what kind of
know-how is needed.

Regards,
	Mario Udina

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Tuesday 20 January 2004 10:12, Mario Udina wrote:
> > The report of yesterday's desktop-research meeting can be found at:
> > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/meeting_reports.xml#d
> >oc_chap2
> >
> > We are still looking for volunteers so if you want to help a hand
> > please contact the lead of the specific research effort you are
> > interested in. (This is also open for non-dev's)
> >
> > Paul
>
> Hello!
>
> I would like to participate but would like to know what kind of
> know-how is needed.

For the current projects it would certainly be an advantage if you can 
program. The biggest qualification though is whether you're interested 
in learning what is needed.

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[foser]

On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 09:54, Paul de Vrieze wrote:

> The report of yesterday's desktop-research meeting can be found at:
> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/meeting_reports.xml#doc_chap2

It lacks any rationale or even if what i proposed got discussed, which i
think is of more immediate importance than any of both currently started
subprojects. An IRC log would be helpful or even better a short summary.

In the subprojects themselves i lack both rationale and any serious
details of how this is going to be planned. To be honest the 'graphical
installer' is proposed and started seven times seven times by now
without any significant results. And i doubt it falls under the category
'desktop project', it's much broader and has actually little to do with
working on a desktop. On a minor note, the lead is not even member of
the research project (or not so on the project page) and that seems like
a logical requirement to me. Is it even a good idea to have a DTL lead
also lead a research project? DTL leads should be validating their
personally lead projects in the end, that's not a good thing per se.
Just member would probably be better.

Now let's get back to my hack 'n slash game ;)

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Tiemo Kieft]

Irc log is available on
http://dev.gentoo.org/~blubber/desktop-research/meeting_20030119.log


> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 09:54, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> 
> > The report of yesterday's desktop-research meeting can be found at:
> > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/meeting_reports.xml#doc_chap2
> 
> It lacks any rationale or even if what i proposed got discussed, which i
> think is of more immediate importance than any of both currently started
> subprojects. An IRC log would be helpful or even better a short summary.
> 
> In the subprojects themselves i lack both rationale and any serious
> details of how this is going to be planned. To be honest the 'graphical
> installer' is proposed and started seven times seven times by now
> without any significant results. And i doubt it falls under the category
> 'desktop project', it's much broader and has actually little to do with
> working on a desktop. On a minor note, the lead is not even member of
> the research project (or not so on the project page) and that seems like
> a logical requirement to me. Is it even a good idea to have a DTL lead
> also lead a research project? DTL leads should be validating their
> personally lead projects in the end, that's not a good thing per se.
> Just member would probably be better.
> 
> Now let's get back to my hack 'n slash game ;)
> 
> - foser
> 
> 
> --
> gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Donnie Berkholz]

> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 09:54, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
>
>> The report of yesterday's desktop-research meeting can be found at:
>> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/meeting_reports.xml#doc_chap2
>
> It lacks any rationale or even if what i proposed got discussed, which i
> think is of more immediate importance than any of both currently started
> subprojects. An IRC log would be helpful or even better a short summary.
>
> In the subprojects themselves i lack both rationale and any serious
> details of how this is going to be planned. To be honest the 'graphical
> installer' is proposed and started seven times seven times by now
> without any significant results. And i doubt it falls under the category
> 'desktop project', it's much broader and has actually little to do with
> working on a desktop. On a minor note, the lead is not even member of
> the research project (or not so on the project page) and that seems like
> a logical requirement to me. Is it even a good idea to have a DTL lead
> also lead a research project? DTL leads should be validating their
> personally lead projects in the end, that's not a good thing per se.
> Just member would probably be better.

I didn't particularly want to lead the installer project, I was picking up
the slack until someone else was interested in leading it because nobody
stepped forward. Brandon asked to stress it at the meeting because he
couldn't be there, I did, and I got given the responsibility.

If the rest of the research people also feel that your proposal is more
important to pursue right now and should be the second project instead of
the installer, I have no problem with that.

Donnie



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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[foser]

On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 13:23, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> I didn't particularly want to lead the installer project, I was picking up
> the slack until someone else was interested in leading it because nobody
> stepped forward. Brandon asked to stress it at the meeting because he
> couldn't be there, I did, and I got given the responsibility.

Yeah i read the logs on that right now.

Tseng sees the real desktop issues as secondary, while the installer is
not a desktop thing as such (you never see it beyond your install). I
personally think such a vast project (it is a lot) is really beyond the
scope of this team and at least is not a good way to start defining what
this team is supposed to do. You yourself imply that any installer
release up to at least 2004.1 is very unlikely, I'm afraid it's gonna
suck resources from places where _the desktop_ needs them.

On the other hand i do see the need for concentrating installer efforts
(there have been quite a few) and try to get at least somewhere with
them. Either this project is too big to be completed by a few
individuals alone (as former failed installers might indicate) or there
just isn't enough interest to do it (yes i know it gets _asked_ about a
lot, but OSS isn't about asking, it's about doing).

So the quest for a GUI installer i see a bit as a Holy Grail thing for
now, I'd say we could use our round table for more real goals and at
least not put too much emphasis on the installer project.

On a side note, the one 'decided on' implementation detail of the
installer makes not that much sense to me, what good does it do to have
it pluggable ? We got a perfectly fine text based install with some
top-grade docs. We don't have to plug-in different widget sets, who
cares if the installer is QT/GTK/etc. (yeah, i want a Motif installer,
I'm oldskool you know). It seems like over-complication of what is
already a complicated project to me.

> If the rest of the research people also feel that your proposal is more
> important to pursue right now and should be the second project instead of
> the installer, I have no problem with that.

Well, it's not about one or the other, we can have both. The menu thing
has been long going and actually just misses some left-over research and
mostly implementation. But at least it's a goal i think we can achieve
within a reasonable time frame and is an obvious improvement to the
desktop experience as a whole (as opposed to an installer). I see it
didn't even get discussed, which is a bit of a shame. I thought you were
on of the initiators behind the initial unified menu proposal spyderous
?

What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't start out with
desktop-research staring blind at castles in the sky and in the end
achieve little. I think it's wiser to set shorter term goals and work
from there.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Donnie Berkholz]

foser <foser@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 13:23, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>> If the rest of the research people also feel that your proposal is
>> more important to pursue right now and should be the second project
>> instead of the installer, I have no problem with that.
>
> Well, it's not about one or the other, we can have both. The menu thing
> has been long going and actually just misses some left-over research and
> mostly implementation. But at least it's a goal i think we can achieve
> within a reasonable time frame and is an obvious improvement to the
> desktop experience as a whole (as opposed to an installer). I see it
> didn't even get discussed, which is a bit of a shame. I thought you were
> on of the initiators behind the initial unified menu proposal spyderous
> ?

You've mentioned me being an initiator of that a couple of times, and I
think you must be confusing me with someone else. The only point I had IRT
the .desktop files was getting upstream to do them instead of us writing
hundreds.

Donnie



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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Brandon Hale]

On (01/20/04 14:47), foser wrote:
> 
> Tseng sees the real desktop issues as secondary, while the installer is
> not a desktop thing as such (you never see it beyond your install). I
> personally think such a vast project (it is a lot) is really beyond the
> scope of this team and at least is not a good way to start defining what
> this team is supposed to do. You yourself imply that any installer
> release up to at least 2004.1 is very unlikely, I'm afraid it's gonna
> suck resources from places where _the desktop_ needs them.

Installalling a desktop is a major part of the use experience between distributions. Having a GUI installer is what I see to the the most requested feature from our users, who imo should have a large drive in our development.
Also, I simply asked for desktop research to discuss this topic at the meeting,
they chose it as a topic for further review without me present. I asked it to
be clear that I was not aiming for the actual coding of the installer as an immediate atainable goal, this has happened and failed several times already.

What I asked is for this excellent research team to draw up clear expectations for the installer, what we want it to do, and create a roadmap for realistic completion. This will allow us to find the skilled resources needed to reach milestones, rather than isolated developers w/ their own incompatible visions of the installer. 

I believe this matches the creed of the group, in fact. Create realistic plans for a project, an idea of how it could be done, and detail this completely in a new GLEP. This is simply a first step in a Gentoo-wide installer project.

WRT the menu system:
I believe this is also a very good initiative, and its scope and goals have already been sufficiently laid out. There is little "research" left to be done here, what is needed is approval and implementation. Spyderous and myself will be reviewing this GLEP soon, and I am fairly confident that it will be approved and we will push for *optional* implementation in various desktop projects.

Thanks for your time,
--tseng

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[dams]

Brandon Hale <tseng@gentoo.org> said:

> On (01/20/04 14:47), foser wrote:
> > 
> > Tseng sees the real desktop issues as secondary, while the installer is not
> > a desktop thing as such (you never see it beyond your install). I
> > personally think such a vast project (it is a lot) is really beyond the
> > scope of this team and at least is not a good way to start defining what
> > this team is supposed to do. You yourself imply that any installer release
> > up to at least 2004.1 is very unlikely, I'm afraid it's gonna suck
> > resources from places where _the desktop_ needs them.
> 
> Installalling a desktop is a major part of the use experience between
> distributions. Having a GUI installer is what I see to the the most requested
> feature from our users, who imo should have a large drive in our development.
> Also, I simply asked for desktop research to discuss this topic at the
> meeting, they chose it as a topic for further review without me present. I
> asked it to be clear that I was not aiming for the actual coding of the
> installer as an immediate atainable goal, this has happened and failed
> several times already.

> 
> What I asked is for this excellent research team to draw up clear
> expectations for the installer, what we want it to do, and create a roadmap
> for realistic completion. This will allow us to find the skilled resources
> needed to reach milestones, rather than isolated developers w/ their own
> incompatible visions of the installer.


I think that's the way to go. Some brain storming (some of that has already be
discussed here):

personnal idea : have a minimalistic installation (it'll configure only what it
needs to be installed). The rest is left to the gentoo config tools after the
installation. If needed, the first boot can be special, with easy
access/presentation to the config tools. Major argument : don't develop the
configuration tools 2 times (one in install, one after install).

So what's left :
configure hard drive, partitioning, network, choose minimal installation to do
(masked unmasked, etc), root passwd, user additions.

You end up with a minimal gentoo installed, ready to be configured, and
installed. X might be emerged by the installer, but left in default
configuration that works almost everywhere. On the first boot, X shows up, and
propose you to condifure and install stuff (among them kde, gnome). It can be a
wizard. No window manager needed. You should have the same kind of things if
you choosed not to have X emerged by the installer.


The goal : do the minimum at install time, -> less work.

hardware detection : you only need to detect : harddrive, cdrom, network card, modem,
usb modem, usb storage/harddrive, floppy, very basic video card detection, usb
cdrom, usb adsl modems, mouse, keyboard, and thatt's all !

The beauty of that, is that because you need to detect very few things, you can
do that well. And add unusual detection, like usb cdrom and so on.

-- 
dams

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[dams]

Brandon Hale <tseng@gentoo.org> said:

> On (01/20/04 14:47), foser wrote:
> >
> > Tseng sees the real desktop issues as secondary, while the installer is not
> > a desktop thing as such (you never see it beyond your install). I
> > personally think such a vast project (it is a lot) is really beyond the
> > scope of this team and at least is not a good way to start defining what
> > this team is supposed to do. You yourself imply that any installer release
> > up to at least 2004.1 is very unlikely, I'm afraid it's gonna suck
> > resources from places where the desktop needs them.
>
> Installalling a desktop is a major part of the use experience between
> distributions. Having a GUI installer is what I see to the the most requested
> feature from our users, who imo should have a large drive in our development.
> Also, I simply asked for desktop research to discuss this topic at the
> meeting, they chose it as a topic for further review without me present. I
> asked it to be clear that I was not aiming for the actual coding of the
> installer as an immediate atainable goal, this has happened and failed
> several times already.

>
> What I asked is for this excellent research team to draw up clear
> expectations for the installer, what we want it to do, and create a roadmap
> for realistic completion. This will allow us to find the skilled resources
> needed to reach milestones, rather than isolated developers w/ their own
> incompatible visions of the installer.

I think that's the way to go. Some brain storming (some of that has already be
discussed here):

personnal idea : have a minimalistic installation (it'll configure only what it
needs to be installed). The rest is left to the gentoo config tools after the
installation. If needed, the first boot can be special, with easy
access/presentation to the config tools. Major argument : don't develop the
configuration tools 2 times (one in install, one after install).

So what's left :
configure hard drive, partitioning, network, choose minimal installation to do
(masked unmasked, etc), root passwd, user additions.

You end up with a minimal gentoo installed, ready to be configured, and
installed. X might be emerged by the installer, but left in default
configuration that works almost everywhere. On the first boot, X shows up, and
propose you to condifure and install stuff (among them kde, gnome). It can be a
wizard. No window manager needed. You should have the same kind of things if
you choosed not to have X emerged by the installer.

The goal : do the minimum at install time, -> less work.

hardware detection : you only need to detect : harddrive, cdrom, network card,
modem,
usb modem, usb storage/harddrive, floppy, very basic video card detection, usb
cdrom, usb adsl modems, mouse, keyboard, and thatt's all !

The beauty of that, is that because you need to detect very few things, you can
do that well. And add unusual detection, like usb cdrom, network boot and so on.

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[foser]

On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 18:53, Brandon Hale wrote:

> Installalling a desktop is a major part of the use experience between distributions. Having a GUI installer is what I see to the the most requested feature from our users, who imo should have a large drive in our development.

Yeah and the Gentoo installation is quite smooth. You don't spiff up
hours of compiling much with cool spinning sandbox mouse cursors. It's a
one time thing. The experience comes from using Gentoo mostly, not
installing it (most users enjoy the 'hands on' nature of Gentoo
installation anyway).

And no, as I've said several times, I'm not against an installer for who
cares about it, I'm concerned this project is too high profile for this
team at this time and outside of its scope.

> Also, I simply asked for desktop research to discuss this topic at the meeting,
> they chose it as a topic for further review without me present. I asked it to
> be clear that I was not aiming for the actual coding of the installer as an immediate atainable goal, this has happened and failed several times already.

Well, it got stated more like a necessity thing, everything else being
of secondary nature and that coming from someone formerly not even a
member of the research team to my knowledge. Why the sudden interest to
influence what D&R should be doing ? You must understand that you do
have an automatic greater influence as chosen DTL lead and should be
careful not to mold projects to your own needs instead of letting them
evolve.

> What I asked is for this excellent research team

Isn't it a bit preliminary using such superlatives without any
achievements to show for it?

>  to draw up clear expectations for the installer, what we want it to do, and create a roadmap for realistic completion. This will allow us to find the skilled resources needed to reach milestones, rather than isolated developers w/ their own incompatible visions of the installer. 

A good plan gets made by the skilled developers, you don't attract them
with it. So the first step is to get the developers lined up and what i
see in the logs that was sort of a problem to start with. 

> I believe this matches the creed of the group, in fact. Create realistic plans for a project, an idea of how it could be done, and detail this completely in a new GLEP. This is simply a first step in a Gentoo-wide installer project.

Again, i don't say there shouldn't be an installer or something, it's
the overemphasis that is given to it at this time. Here we have a new
project : "let's go do something" "yeah i know something let's do this
cool thing an installer" "so many have tried and failed and we will
accomplish all" "all these other projects are of inferior nature, let's
work on this till we drop".

Why don't we pick up a few simple achievable projects to start with, it
may not be as earth shattering but at least shows what the team can do.
Later on when the team has worked together, got it's act up (we're all
experimenting here) we can take a look at bigger projects.

> WRT the menu system:
> I believe this is also a very good initiative,

Well, it would be hard to deny that.

>  and its scope and goals have already been sufficiently laid out.

Pretty much.

>  There is little "research" left to be done here, what is needed is approval and implementation.

Have you even read the GLEP ? There's little research done. It all stays
on the level 'this would be nice and we could probably do it like that',
but it doesn't get much further than that (no offence to the writer). It
would be ideal to see what exactly was needed in terms of resources,
changes in the tree, upstream support, etc. This could be done mostly
without any coding. This GLEP can be enormously improved trough
research.

Anyway, I'm merely giving at as a possible reasonably achievable goal
with direct benefits for the desktop. It's just a fact that there's too
little resources to do this with one or two devs, it should be done by
the desktop as a whole. In terms used earlier, it's a way to define how
desktop research, DTL and all it's subprojects should interact to get a
project done. And no i don't think a UI installer will be able to have
this pilot function in a reasonable time frame.

>  Spyderous and myself will be reviewing this GLEP soon, and I am fairly confident that it will be approved and we will push for *optional* implementation in various desktop projects.

It's a GLEP, it's not a D&R project at this time. That means it's not
really up to you. Anyway, as DTL leads you shouldn't be reviewing and
implied veto-ing this, you should be discussing this with all the
relevant subprojects, give feedback, hand out possible tasks to
subprojects and work from there. The DTL leads role in the management
would be to support the GLEP in the management to get approval (although
i think in this case that won't be a problem). DTL is a mediator, not a
legislator.

And then there's the issue (again have you read the GLEP ?) that it is
not optional. We either do it or we don't. And it can only be done (read
: approved by management) when what there is going to be is assumable
better than what is.

Anyway concerning this GLEP, we either hop on the bandwagon now and are
early adopters of the technology (which sounds like the Gentoo i know -
oh i hate myself for using such reasoning ;)-), can prove Gentoo to be a
'bleeding-edge' distro once again and help upstream developers getting
this integrated as well or we hang on and eventually get there anyway.
That's possible too. But this is how the desktop menu wise is going to
be, that's not much of a question to me (nor should it be to you ?).

- foser


--
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Joe McCann]

I agree with all of fosers posts. I don't think there is enough support
to pull off an installer project at the moment. It would be better to
focus energy on the configuration tools mentioned at the last meeting.
Config interfaces should come before an installer anyways. Users who
make it through the current install will be welcomed with some nice
looking and well designed tools to make configuration of the system a
bit easier. If we somehow got a graphical installer up and running, the
users that it was ment for will become frustrated when there are no
tools available to configure different aspects of their systems.Plus as
foser said, configuration tools would be of everyday use where as an
installer is used once and then never seen again. Hopefully a project
involving the devlopment of new tools will gain momentum and draw new
developers and spill over into an installer project.

I know blubber had already been working on a run-script tool that looks
pretty nice. http://gct.sourceforge.net/ I believe there is also a gtk2/
python portage front end being developed called porthole. Since it seems
there are currently more developers interested in developing these type
of tools rather than an installer, maybe this would be a better
direction to move in for now.
On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 01:07 +0100, foser wrote: 
> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 18:53, Brandon Hale wrote:
> 
> > Installalling a desktop is a major part of the use experience between distributions. Having a GUI installer is what I see to the the most requested feature from our users, who imo should have a large drive in our development.
> 
> Yeah and the Gentoo installation is quite smooth. You don't spiff up
> hours of compiling much with cool spinning sandbox mouse cursors. It's a
> one time thing. The experience comes from using Gentoo mostly, not
> installing it (most users enjoy the 'hands on' nature of Gentoo
> installation anyway).
> 
> And no, as I've said several times, I'm not against an installer for who
> cares about it, I'm concerned this project is too high profile for this
> team at this time and outside of its scope.
> 
> > Also, I simply asked for desktop research to discuss this topic at the meeting,
> > they chose it as a topic for further review without me present. I asked it to
> > be clear that I was not aiming for the actual coding of the installer as an immediate atainable goal, this has happened and failed several times already.
> 
> Well, it got stated more like a necessity thing, everything else being
> of secondary nature and that coming from someone formerly not even a
> member of the research team to my knowledge. Why the sudden interest to
> influence what D&R should be doing ? You must understand that you do
> have an automatic greater influence as chosen DTL lead and should be
> careful not to mold projects to your own needs instead of letting them
> evolve.
> 
> > What I asked is for this excellent research team
> 
> Isn't it a bit preliminary using such superlatives without any
> achievements to show for it?
> 
> >  to draw up clear expectations for the installer, what we want it to do, and create a roadmap for realistic completion. This will allow us to find the skilled resources needed to reach milestones, rather than isolated developers w/ their own incompatible visions of the installer. 
> 
> A good plan gets made by the skilled developers, you don't attract them
> with it. So the first step is to get the developers lined up and what i
> see in the logs that was sort of a problem to start with. 
> 
> > I believe this matches the creed of the group, in fact. Create realistic plans for a project, an idea of how it could be done, and detail this completely in a new GLEP. This is simply a first step in a Gentoo-wide installer project.
> 
> Again, i don't say there shouldn't be an installer or something, it's
> the overemphasis that is given to it at this time. Here we have a new
> project : "let's go do something" "yeah i know something let's do this
> cool thing an installer" "so many have tried and failed and we will
> accomplish all" "all these other projects are of inferior nature, let's
> work on this till we drop".
> 
> Why don't we pick up a few simple achievable projects to start with, it
> may not be as earth shattering but at least shows what the team can do.
> Later on when the team has worked together, got it's act up (we're all
> experimenting here) we can take a look at bigger projects.
> 
> > WRT the menu system:
> > I believe this is also a very good initiative,
> 
> Well, it would be hard to deny that.
> 
> >  and its scope and goals have already been sufficiently laid out.
> 
> Pretty much.
> 
> >  There is little "research" left to be done here, what is needed is approval and implementation.
> 
> Have you even read the GLEP ? There's little research done. It all stays
> on the level 'this would be nice and we could probably do it like that',
> but it doesn't get much further than that (no offence to the writer). It
> would be ideal to see what exactly was needed in terms of resources,
> changes in the tree, upstream support, etc. This could be done mostly
> without any coding. This GLEP can be enormously improved trough
> research.
> 
> Anyway, I'm merely giving at as a possible reasonably achievable goal
> with direct benefits for the desktop. It's just a fact that there's too
> little resources to do this with one or two devs, it should be done by
> the desktop as a whole. In terms used earlier, it's a way to define how
> desktop research, DTL and all it's subprojects should interact to get a
> project done. And no i don't think a UI installer will be able to have
> this pilot function in a reasonable time frame.
> 
> >  Spyderous and myself will be reviewing this GLEP soon, and I am fairly confident that it will be approved and we will push for *optional* implementation in various desktop projects.
> 
> It's a GLEP, it's not a D&R project at this time. That means it's not
> really up to you. Anyway, as DTL leads you shouldn't be reviewing and
> implied veto-ing this, you should be discussing this with all the
> relevant subprojects, give feedback, hand out possible tasks to
> subprojects and work from there. The DTL leads role in the management
> would be to support the GLEP in the management to get approval (although
> i think in this case that won't be a problem). DTL is a mediator, not a
> legislator.
> 
> And then there's the issue (again have you read the GLEP ?) that it is
> not optional. We either do it or we don't. And it can only be done (read
> : approved by management) when what there is going to be is assumable
> better than what is.
> 
> Anyway concerning this GLEP, we either hop on the bandwagon now and are
> early adopters of the technology (which sounds like the Gentoo i know -
> oh i hate myself for using such reasoning ;)-), can prove Gentoo to be a
> 'bleeding-edge' distro once again and help upstream developers getting
> this integrated as well or we hang on and eventually get there anyway.
> That's possible too. But this is how the desktop menu wise is going to
> be, that's not much of a question to me (nor should it be to you ?).
> 
> - foser
> 
> 
> --
> gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list


--
gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[dams]

Brandon Hale <tseng@gentoo.org> said:

> On (01/20/04 14:47), foser wrote:
> >
> > Tseng sees the real desktop issues as secondary, while the installer is not
> > a desktop thing as such (you never see it beyond your install). I
> > personally think such a vast project (it is a lot) is really beyond the
> > scope of this team and at least is not a good way to start defining what
> > this team is supposed to do. You yourself imply that any installer release
> > up to at least 2004.1 is very unlikely, I'm afraid it's gonna suck
> > resources from places where the desktop needs them.
>
> Installalling a desktop is a major part of the use experience between
> distributions. Having a GUI installer is what I see to the the most requested
> feature from our users, who imo should have a large drive in our development.
> Also, I simply asked for desktop research to discuss this topic at the
> meeting, they chose it as a topic for further review without me present. I
> asked it to be clear that I was not aiming for the actual coding of the
> installer as an immediate atainable goal, this has happened and failed
> several times already.

>
> What I asked is for this excellent research team to draw up clear
> expectations for the installer, what we want it to do, and create a roadmap
> for realistic completion. This will allow us to find the skilled resources
> needed to reach milestones, rather than isolated developers w/ their own
> incompatible visions of the installer.

I think that's the way to go. Some brain storming (some of that has already be
discussed here):

personnal idea : have a minimalistic installation (it'll configure only what it
needs to be installed). The rest is left to the gentoo config tools after the
installation. If needed, the first boot can be special, with easy
access/presentation to the config tools. Major argument : don't develop the
configuration tools 2 times (one in install, one after install).

So what's left :
configure hard drive, partitioning, network, choose minimal installation to do
(masked unmasked, etc), root passwd, user additions.

You end up with a minimal gentoo installed, ready to be configured, and
installed. X might be emerged by the installer, but left in default
configuration that works almost everywhere. On the first boot, X shows up, and
propose you to condifure and install stuff (among them kde, gnome). It can be a
wizard. No window manager needed. You should have the same kind of things if
you choosed not to have X emerged by the installer.

The goal : do the minimum at install time, -> less work.

hardware detection : you only need to detect : harddrive, cdrom, network card,
modem,
usb modem, usb storage/harddrive, floppy, very basic video card detection, usb
cdrom, usb adsl modems, mouse, keyboard, and thatt's all !

The beauty of that, is that because you need to detect very few things, you can
do that well. And add unusual detection, like usb cdrom, network boot and so on.

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Tuesday 20 January 2004 11:40, foser wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 09:54, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> > The report of yesterday's desktop-research meeting can be found at:
> > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/meeting_reports.xml#d
> >oc_chap2
>
> It lacks any rationale or even if what i proposed got discussed, which
> i think is of more immediate importance than any of both currently
> started subprojects. An IRC log would be helpful or even better a
> short summary.
>
> In the subprojects themselves i lack both rationale and any serious
> details of how this is going to be planned. To be honest the
> 'graphical installer' is proposed and started seven times seven times
> by now without any significant results. And i doubt it falls under the
> category 'desktop project', it's much broader and has actually little
> to do with working on a desktop. On a minor note, the lead is not even
> member of the research project (or not so on the project page) and
> that seems like a logical requirement to me. Is it even a good idea to
> have a DTL lead also lead a research project? DTL leads should be
> validating their personally lead projects in the end, that's not a
> good thing per se. Just member would probably be better.

The purpose of the meeting was specifically not to discuss possible 
solutions for solving the "installer" problem. That is actually a 
subject of research. If someone else wants to step up as lead that is 
good for me. (if you want to do it, I'm ok and I suppose spyderous is 
too)

The main point was first on selecting lines of research and starting a 
group for actually performing the named research. Things have been going 
to slow with research and this is an attempt at getting things going. We 
need people to actually do things an getting results.

To me an installer that is aimed at single-system installs is very much a 
desktop topic. It is concerned with the use as workstation. As such this 
is a desktop-research topic

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[foser]

On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 13:55, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> The purpose of the meeting was specifically not to discuss possible 
> solutions for solving the "installer" problem. That is actually a 
> subject of research. If someone else wants to step up as lead that is 
> good for me. (if you want to do it, I'm ok and I suppose spyderous is 
> too)

No, I'm little interested in creating an installer personally. The
question about spyderous's lead is not one about competence, but as the
log shows he doesn't seem to be hot on leading it either. I think that
in itself is already an indicator of how spyderous perceives this
project. If someone is really interested in doing this, well then he
should take lead. Spyderous seems to have taken it, because noone else
wanted to and the project was dubbed too important to be dropped or left
around for some later point.

> The main point was first on selecting lines of research and starting a 
> group for actually performing the named research. Things have been going 
> to slow with research and this is an attempt at getting things going. We 
> need people to actually do things an getting results.

Yeah i know what the point was, but i hoped it would be more attainable
projects that would be chosen.

> To me an installer that is aimed at single-system installs is very much a 
> desktop topic. It is concerned with the use as workstation. As such this 
> is a desktop-research topic

'workstation' to me sounds like a business/school/etc (non-home)
environment, in such an environment it's usually not the best idea to
install per-machine by using some GUI (or not) installer.

I can see the use of an installer, that is not my point. It's about the
size of this project vs. the non-existent experience of this team as an
entity and that it touches much more aspects of Gentoo than the desktop
alone. Actually think it's not a desktop project as such, because
creating the actual UI is most likely the minor part of the work.

- foser


--
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Tom Hosiawa]

> In the subprojects themselves i lack both rationale and any serious
> details of how this is going to be planned. To be honest the 'graphical
> installer' is proposed and started seven times seven times by now
> without any significant results. And i doubt it falls under the category
> 'desktop project', it's much broader and has actually little to do with
> working on a desktop. On a minor note, the lead is not even member of
> the research project (or not so on the project page) and that seems like
> a logical requirement to me. Is it even a good idea to have a DTL lead
> also lead a research project? DTL leads should be validating their
> personally lead projects in the end, that's not a good thing per se.
> Just member would probably be better.

I think an installer has very much to do with the installer, people who
are more likely to use (depend) on the installer are probably less
comfortable with configuring the system from the command line.

I see the installer targeting more of a newbie basis.

Tom


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gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Seemant Kulleen]

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You know, I have an idea (which isn't mine originally -- the originator
was the ex-dev ska-fan about 18 months ago, and more recently others
have mentioned it to me).  I think it would be nicer instead of focusing
on installer, but rather on the desktop experience.  One way would be to
have config tools based on dams' libconf, and the other way would be to
have UTF-8 default.  I think Spider should chime in on this.

thanks,
-- 
Seemant Kulleen
Developer and Project Co-ordinator,
Gentoo Linux					http://dev.gentoo.org/~seemant

Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x3458780E
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 14:57, Seemant Kulleen wrote:
> You know, I have an idea (which isn't mine originally -- the originator
> was the ex-dev ska-fan about 18 months ago, and more recently others
> have mentioned it to me).  I think it would be nicer instead of focusing
> on installer, but rather on the desktop experience.  One way would be to
> have config tools based on dams' libconf, and the other way would be to
> have UTF-8 default.  I think Spider should chime in on this.

Since avenj was too lazy to subscribe =P :
<avenj> wasn't there some kind of potential performance hit there?
<avenj> i thought i was thinking someone thought part of the issue with
RH's performance was utf8 default, but now i'm thinking i'm not sure

Anybody know more about this?

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[foser]

On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 21:01, Donnie Berkholz wrote:

> Since avenj was too lazy to subscribe =P :
> <avenj> wasn't there some kind of potential performance hit there?
> <avenj> i thought i was thinking someone thought part of the issue with
> RH's performance was utf8 default, but now i'm thinking i'm not sure

You don't mean python's alleged performance hit (this got shortly
discussed on -dev by lqx) ? To attribute a full systems performance to
UTF-8 sounds far fetched to me. Anyway, the benefits likely outclass
performance loss.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[Alastair Tse]

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On 21 Jan 2004, at 22:58, foser wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 21:01, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>
>> Since avenj was too lazy to subscribe =P :
>> <avenj> wasn't there some kind of potential performance hit there?
>> <avenj> i thought i was thinking someone thought part of the issue 
>> with
>> RH's performance was utf8 default, but now i'm thinking i'm not sure
>
> You don't mean python's alleged performance hit (this got shortly
> discussed on -dev by lqx) ? To attribute a full systems performance to
> UTF-8 sounds far fetched to me. Anyway, the benefits likely outclass
> performance loss.

Exactly, the performance hit is minimal for people who don't care about 
UTF-8. The only performance hit was in python _if_ you used UTF-8 in a 
script/application. And the performance hit was not in processing time, 
but in memory consumption.

UTF-8 is pretty much essential to adoption by middle-eastern, european 
and cjk languages. It could probably be taken on as a desktop project, 
but I'd much rather it be a Gentoo-wide thing, because it affects much 
more than the desktop (for instance, if you password has an accent in 
it, then it will work differently under UTF-8.)

BTW, in respect to avenj's comment, there is no noticable performance 
hit on Redhat 8/9 because of UTF-8 support, unless you mean the fact 
that it would make glibc compiles a little bit longer because it 
generates more locales with UTF-8 character sets.

Cheers,
- --
Alastair 'liquidx' Tse
  >> Gentoo Developer
  >> http://www.liquidx.net/ | http://dev.gentoo.org/~liquidx/
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[dams]

foser <foser@gentoo.org> said:

> On Wed, 2004-01-21 at 21:01, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> 
> > Since avenj was too lazy to subscribe =P :
> > <avenj> wasn't there some kind of potential performance hit there?
> > <avenj> i thought i was thinking someone thought part of the issue with
> > RH's performance was utf8 default, but now i'm thinking i'm not sure
> 
> You don't mean python's alleged performance hit (this got shortly
> discussed on -dev by lqx) ? To attribute a full systems performance to
> UTF-8 sounds far fetched to me. Anyway, the benefits likely outclass
> performance loss.

<AOL>

utf8 will have to be chosen as default one day. we need to use it asap

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[dams]

Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> said:

> You know, I have an idea (which isn't mine originally -- the originator
> was the ex-dev ska-fan about 18 months ago, and more recently others
> have mentioned it to me).  I think it would be nicer instead of focusing
> on installer, but rather on the desktop experience.  One way would be to
> have config tools based on dams' libconf, and the other way would be to
> have UTF-8 default.  I think Spider should chime in on this.

you are probably right on the installer part : it's maybe too big for the
-research to develop it. But I think it's still a good thinkg to talk about it,
with logs, meeting reports and so on. It might be good to have at least
organized and written notes on the subject, even if we don't bring anything
new. Installer development should not be held by the -research imo, but
Installer research can be :)

We can discuss the various scenario possible, list them, and see if they are
really doable, realistic, which one is the easiest, or more powerfull, or more
flexible, or more gentoo way. (sorry for my bad english, it's the morning here:)

The config tools discussion and development will be initiated here. We can end
up with a prototype, and development team(s), schedule, and specifications.


-- 
dams

--
gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Report of the desktop-research meeting.

[dams]

Seemant Kulleen <seemant@gentoo.org> said:

> You know, I have an idea (which isn't mine originally -- the originator
> was the ex-dev ska-fan about 18 months ago, and more recently others
> have mentioned it to me).  I think it would be nicer instead of focusing
> on installer, but rather on the desktop experience.  One way would be to
> have config tools based on dams' libconf, and the other way would be to
> have UTF-8 default.  I think Spider should chime in on this.

you are probably right on the installer part : it's maybe too big for the
-research to develop it. But I think it's still a good thinkg to talk about it,
with logs, meeting reports and so on. It might be good to have at least
organized and written notes on the subject, even if we don't bring anything
new. Installer development should not be held by the -research imo, but
Installer research can be :)

We can discuss the various scenario possible, list them, and see if they are
really doable, realistic, which one is the easiest, or more powerfull, or more
flexible, or more gentoo way. (sorry for my bad english, it's the morning
here:)

The config tools discussion and development will be initiated here. We can end
up with a prototype, and development team(s), schedule, and specifications.

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On Thu, 2004-01-22 at 04:28, dams@gentoo.org wrote:
> you are probably right on the installer part : it's maybe too big for the
> -research to develop it. But I think it's still a good thinkg to talk about it,
> with logs, meeting reports and so on. It might be good to have at least
> organized and written notes on the subject, even if we don't bring anything
> new. Installer development should not be held by the -research imo, but
> Installer research can be :)

Oh you of little faith. Someone approached karltk at LWE with a
completed python+gtk2 installer. See http://pen2.sclab.clarkson.edu/.

I quote Karl:
"What's more, they're going to be working actively on this
irrespectively of whether we officially start using it or not. I
personally would think it completely stupid not to seriously consider
this most generous offer; they are an entire sw development team, they
seem organised, they have api docs, and they're long-time gentoo users.
Having them do most of the dirty-work, leaves us to do integration and
tweaks, to polish this thing off."

An old snapshot of source is at:
http://www.clarkson.edu/class/cs450/fa2003/projects/gentoo/pen2.tar.gz.

Thanks,
Donnie

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer

[Tiemo Kieft]

> I quote Karl:
> "What's more, they're going to be working actively on this
> irrespectively of whether we officially start using it or not. I
> personally would think it completely stupid not to seriously consider
> this most generous offer; they are an entire sw development team, they
> seem organised, they have api docs, and they're long-time gentoo users.
> Having them do most of the dirty-work, leaves us to do integration and
> tweaks, to polish this thing off."

Looks really nice, those mockups. 

> An old snapshot of source is at:
> http://www.clarkson.edu/class/cs450/fa2003/projects/gentoo/pen2.tar.gz.

Going to take a look at it right now.

Groeten,
Tiemo
-- 
Gentoo Linux Documentation developer & Desktop Research member
Dutch Documentation: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/nl/index.xml
Desktop Research: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/desktop/research/
blubber@gentoo.org | http://dev.gentoo.org/~blubber/

Public key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE3E9E3A6
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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 22 January 2004 18:02, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>
> Oh you of little faith. Someone approached karltk at LWE with a
> completed python+gtk2 installer. See http://pen2.sclab.clarkson.edu/.
>
> I quote Karl:
> "What's more, they're going to be working actively on this
> irrespectively of whether we officially start using it or not. I
> personally would think it completely stupid not to seriously consider
> this most generous offer; they are an entire sw development team, they
> seem organised, they have api docs, and they're long-time gentoo users.
> Having them do most of the dirty-work, leaves us to do integration and
> tweaks, to polish this thing off."

Looks quite ok. There are some point I think are of interest though which 
basically come down to "there is no expert mode":
- There is access to a partitioning tool, let alone qtparted or similar.
- Only a very rough package selection is available.
- I don't know whether it is smart to offer a no-network setup to newbee's,
  gentoo has a rather strong assumption on the network being available.

In general I think we should decide on what kind of installer we want, who do 
we want to target? Do we want to target newbee's. Do we want to offer 
software based on detected available hardware (offer sane if a supported 
scanner was detected)

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer

[Scott Koch]

Paul de Vrieze wrote:

>On Thursday 22 January 2004 18:02, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>  
>
>>Oh you of little faith. Someone approached karltk at LWE with a
>>completed python+gtk2 installer. See http://pen2.sclab.clarkson.edu/.
>>
>>I quote Karl:
>>"What's more, they're going to be working actively on this
>>irrespectively of whether we officially start using it or not. I
>>personally would think it completely stupid not to seriously consider
>>this most generous offer; they are an entire sw development team, they
>>seem organised, they have api docs, and they're long-time gentoo users.
>>Having them do most of the dirty-work, leaves us to do integration and
>>tweaks, to polish this thing off."
>>    
>>
>
>Looks quite ok. There are some point I think are of interest though which 
>basically come down to "there is no expert mode":
>- There is access to a partitioning tool, let alone qtparted or similar.
>- Only a very rough package selection is available.
>- I don't know whether it is smart to offer a no-network setup to newbee's,
>  gentoo has a rather strong assumption on the network being available.
>
>In general I think we should decide on what kind of installer we want, who do 
>we want to target? Do we want to target newbee's. Do we want to offer 
>software based on detected available hardware (offer sane if a supported 
>scanner was detected)
>
>Paul
>
>  
>
The project looks like a very good start.  My concerns go along with 
what Paul was mentioning.  Here goes:

1. "Expert Mode":  yes this is something that is needed, but I think the 
expert mode should be no more than just a console with maybe an easier 
way to view the install documention.  The current method of install, 
although some think it is a disadvantage of gentoo, I think that it is 
an advantage, even for the intermediate/entry level gentoo users.  A not 
so experienced user can learn so much by going through that install.  Or 
even, the expert mode could be as little as "reboot and insert basic liveCD"

2. Advanced Package selection: This would be a great addition to both 
the installer and the desktop in general.

3. Gtk2: I am thinking that this may not be the best interface to use.  
How will this fair with those putting gentoo on very slow/old machines.  
Also for those doing an install through ssh would not be able to benifit 
from this.  Maybe curses would be the way to go?  There are already many 
tools that are already made for curses(menuconfig, ufed, net-setup).  Or 
heck maybe there could be support for both.

Overall I think the big concern is those user that are stuck in between 
the two categories(beginer and expert).  This is also probably the group 
that needs to be "targeted".  These are the people, who I would say, who 
want a customized system but don't want to go through all the "trouble" 
of the install now.  I think the best solution for this is just to do 
each individual step or group of steps as much as possible in graphical 
mode, but allow the user to switch back and forth between "graphical 
mode" and "console mode".  This way they can ease their way into 
intalling gentoo the _real_ way. 

Most gentoo users are above the involment level of this installer. But 
hopefully in the future gentoo will attract some that this would be 
perfect for.  This is a great start, and it is good to see that a 
project like this is in the making!

Scott



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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer

[Tiemo Kieft]

> 3. Gtk2: I am thinking that this may not be the best interface to use.  
> How will this fair with those putting gentoo on very slow/old machines.  
> Also for those doing an install through ssh would not be able to benifit 
> from this.  Maybe curses would be the way to go?  There are already many 
> tools that are already made for curses(menuconfig, ufed, net-setup).  Or 
> heck maybe there could be support for both.

This actually is one of the requirements for the installer as well as
the config tools. It was discussed in the desktop-research meeting. We
really want to support both.

Greetings,
Tiemo

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer

[foser]

On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 01:07, Tiemo Kieft wrote:
> > 3. Gtk2: I am thinking that this may not be the best interface to use.  
> > How will this fair with those putting gentoo on very slow/old machines.  
> > Also for those doing an install through ssh would not be able to benifit 
> > from this.  Maybe curses would be the way to go?  There are already many 
> > tools that are already made for curses(menuconfig, ufed, net-setup).  Or 
> > heck maybe there could be support for both.
> 
> This actually is one of the requirements for the installer as well as
> the config tools. It was discussed in the desktop-research meeting. We
> really want to support both.

I think it's a pretty silly idea to support multiple backends. Afaic
it's about a GUI installer, so ncurses isn't really what we are after.
You always will get compared to other installers which aren't curses
anymore. The people installing over SSH aren't the new users a GUI
installer is targeted at anyway.

As far as the choice for a widget set, gtk2 seems logical to me. It may
be allegedly slow on older systems, but we're talking about 3 buttons on
a screen here. And if the installer is considered slow, well what's
gonna happen when someone does a GRP install of stable GNOME or KDE.
That's gonna be real slow desktop-ing.

You just shouldn't try to create something like an installer for
everybody, just target your wanted audience and thats it. I'd say the
target audience here is new (linux) users on fairly up-to-date systems. 

What i saw from the installer here is pretty much what I'd like to see
from a final product : only a few steps, basic system setup so you can
be up and installing in no-time, don't ask for conformation on all sorts
of specific apps you never heard of (eg. in a desktop situation it's
hard enough for a new person to know the difference between GNOME &
KDE). For an 'expert mode' I would point to our well documented manual
installation process.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer

[dams]

foser <foser@gentoo.org> said:

> On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 01:07, Tiemo Kieft wrote:
> > > 3. Gtk2: I am thinking that this may not be the best interface to use.  
> > > How will this fair with those putting gentoo on very slow/old machines.  
> > > Also for those doing an install through ssh would not be able to benifit 
> > > from this.  Maybe curses would be the way to go?  There are already many 
> > > tools that are already made for curses(menuconfig, ufed, net-setup).  Or 
> > > heck maybe there could be support for both.
> > 
> > This actually is one of the requirements for the installer as well as
> > the config tools. It was discussed in the desktop-research meeting. We
> > really want to support both.
> 
> I think it's a pretty silly idea to support multiple backends. Afaic
> it's about a GUI installer, so ncurses isn't really what we are after.
> You always will get compared to other installers which aren't curses
> anymore.

Can you give me example of installer that aren't ncurses anymore?
redhat, mandrake, debian, slackware have all ncurses/newt option

> The people installing over SSH aren't the new users a GUI
> installer is targeted at anyway.
> 
> As far as the choice for a widget set, gtk2 seems logical to me. It may
> be allegedly slow on older systems, but we're talking about 3 buttons on
> a screen here. And if the installer is considered slow, well what's
> gonna happen when someone does a GRP install of stable GNOME or KDE.
> That's gonna be real slow desktop-ing.

agreed on that. gtk2 or qt or whatever, just need to choose. I prefere gtk2
because of the language binding possibilities, but it's only my opinion

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[gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[Scott Koch]

The main thing that will dictate the features, design and capabilities 
of the installer is the user group we want to target.  I think everybody 
realizes this, and it has be mentioned other places.   I feel  this is 
very important we establish this up front.  This way we will all be on 
the same page as to what installer will require.

My thoughts on this are as follows:

I think the target should be users that are "new to Gentoo" switching 
from other linux distributions.  I do not think that Gentoo has the 
public popularity to attrack a large amount of "new to linux users."  
Most of the new to linux users will only choose to go with gentoo when 
the majority of stuff they look up about linux is about or mentions 
Gentoo.  Maybe stage 2 of the installer project could be an 
installer(like the one Karltk was given) that is very simple and targets 
users that are new to linux.  If we can get the users to switch to 
gentoo from the other distros then the new to linux users are sure to 
follow.

Scott


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[foser]

On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 20:14, Scott Koch wrote:
> I think the target should be users that are "new to Gentoo" switching 
> from other linux distributions. 

Yes maybe, probably coming from MDK, RH or Suse, those are usually
pretty fresh linux users. What i really meant to say was that the people
wanting a GUI installer are the same ones that have little actual linux
knowledge (the 'i want it to be simple and just work' people) and not
the more geekish crowd that Gentoo on the other side attracts. Those
like their installs as it is, with the full power that comes with it.
They don't want spiffy UI tools that only hide whats really going on. So
you only have to target the first group.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[Scott Koch]

foser wrote:

>On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 20:14, Scott Koch wrote:
>  
>
>>I think the target should be users that are "new to Gentoo" switching 
>>from other linux distributions. 
>>    
>>
>
>Yes maybe, probably coming from MDK, RH or Suse, those are usually
>pretty fresh linux users. What i really meant to say was that the people
>wanting a GUI installer are the same ones that have little actual linux
>knowledge (the 'i want it to be simple and just work' people) and not
>the more geekish crowd that Gentoo on the other side attracts. Those
>like their installs as it is, with the full power that comes with it.
>They don't want spiffy UI tools that only hide whats really going on. So
>you only have to target the first group.
>
>- foser
>
>
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>gentoo-desktop-research@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>
>  
>
Maybe saying Mdk, RH, Suse type users isn't the best description.  There 
is a vast range of skill levels amoung there users.  Thinking back I 
used mandrake without haveing a clue of how to do anything in linux.  Is 
this more the direction we are heading in.  Have an easy but 
customizable setup for computers to do mainly the basics (web, mail, 
documents, multimedia, games?) in the fast gentoo way.

-Scott


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[foser]

On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 21:18, Scott Koch wrote:

> Maybe saying Mdk, RH, Suse type users isn't the best description.  There 
> is a vast range of skill levels amoung there users.  Thinking back I 
> used mandrake without haveing a clue of how to do anything in linux.  Is 
> this more the direction we are heading in.  Have an easy but 
> customizable setup for computers to do mainly the basics (web, mail, 
> documents, multimedia, games?) in the fast gentoo way.

Is this a question ? We must not confuse things here, if you say 'is
this the way an installer should be heading?' i say yes. If you mean if
this is the way Gentoo is heading, no. In my opinion the installer
should be aimed at the lower skill levels, because the higher skill
levels appreciate the power and hands-on feeling that the current
install process gives them.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[Nathaniel McCallum]

On Jan 24, 2004, at 9:55 AM, foser wrote:
>
> Is this a question ? We must not confuse things here, if you say 'is
> this the way an installer should be heading?' i say yes. If you mean if
> this is the way Gentoo is heading, no. In my opinion the installer
> should be aimed at the lower skill levels, because the higher skill
> levels appreciate the power and hands-on feeling that the current
> install process gives them.

I know that I'm not a dev, but I soon hope to be.  However, I have a 
lot of experience writing installers for Gentoo (GLIS).  I totally 
disagree with picking a target group for a gentoo installer.  I think 
an installer can very easily appeal to all groups.  The only difference 
in installers between the easy installer and the advanced installer is 
the amount of defaults that are chosen for the user.  This is really 
not hard to implement.

Nathaniel


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[Tom Hosiawa]

> > Is this a question ? We must not confuse things here, if you say 'is
> > this the way an installer should be heading?' i say yes. If you mean if
> > this is the way Gentoo is heading, no. In my opinion the installer
> > should be aimed at the lower skill levels, because the higher skill
> > levels appreciate the power and hands-on feeling that the current
> > install process gives them.
> 
> I know that I'm not a dev, but I soon hope to be.  However, I have a 
> lot of experience writing installers for Gentoo (GLIS).  I totally 
> disagree with picking a target group for a gentoo installer.  I think 
> an installer can very easily appeal to all groups.  The only difference 
> in installers between the easy installer and the advanced installer is 
> the amount of defaults that are chosen for the user.  This is really 
> not hard to implement.
> 
> Nathaniel

I sort of agree with that. I loved doing the command line install the
first time, a true learning experience. But now it's just repetitive,
something to automate the trivial tasks would be welcome.

Tom


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[lukas]

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On Saturday 24 January 2004 20:19, Tom Hosiawa wrote:

> I sort of agree with that. I loved doing the command line install the
> first time, a true learning experience. But now it's just repetitive,
> something to automate the trivial tasks would be welcome.

Maybe I'm alone in my opinion but I don't wan't an installer at all.
I fear this will lead Gentoo to the same way like redhat, suse and the
other ones.

cu

lukas



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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[Nathaniel McCallum]

On Jan 24, 2004, at 7:29 PM, lukas wrote:

> On Saturday 24 January 2004 20:19, Tom Hosiawa wrote:
>
>> I sort of agree with that. I loved doing the command line install the
>> first time, a true learning experience. But now it's just repetitive,
>> something to automate the trivial tasks would be welcome.
>
> Maybe I'm alone in my opinion but I don't wan't an installer at all.
> I fear this will lead Gentoo to the same way like redhat, suse and the
> other ones.
Perhaps maybe it will lead us in the same was as slackware or 
freebsd...  They both have installers...

Nathaniel


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[lukas]

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On Sunday 25 January 2004 02:00, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:

> > Maybe I'm alone in my opinion but I don't wan't an installer at
> > all. I fear this will lead Gentoo to the same way like redhat, suse
> > and the other ones.
>
> Perhaps maybe it will lead us in the same was as slackware or
> freebsd...  They both have installers...

Ok, maybe I'm too pessimistic. I hope you're right in your
opinion.

cu

lukas

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RE: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[Steve Barnhart]

-----Original Message-----
From: foser [mailto:foser@gentoo.org] 
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 7:48 PM
To: gentoo-desktop-research@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 20:14, Scott Koch wrote:
> I think the target should be users that are "new to Gentoo" switching 
> from other linux distributions. 

Yes maybe, probably coming from MDK, RH or Suse, those are usually
pretty fresh linux users. What i really meant to say was that the people
wanting a GUI installer are the same ones that have little actual linux
knowledge (the 'i want it to be simple and just work' people) and not
the more geekish crowd that Gentoo on the other side attracts. Those
like their installs as it is, with the full power that comes with it.
They don't want spiffy UI tools that only hide whats really going on. So
you only have to target the first group.
[Steve Barnhart] 
I particularly disagree with that on some parts. I like gentoo's install
right now, its fast and so well documented its not really hard at all. On
the other hand I like good looking things :-). I like a nice look and brand
every once in a while and I think a good gui installer would look nice. The
look is sometimes what attracts me to a distribution or one software choice
over another (I know this sounds stupid). I mean if one piece of software
sucks really badbut has a nice gui then I won't use it but if 2 r equal I'll
choose the better looking one.

- foser


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RE: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[foser]

On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 02:26, Steve Barnhart wrote:

> I particularly disagree with that on some parts. I like gentoo's install
> right now, its fast and so well documented its not really hard at all. 

That is correct it is not hard really, but i would use the word
'intimidating' for the current install. People scare away from a lengthy
installation manual, I think we should be aiming to accommodate those
users. Creating a GUI installer that is as powerful as the current
install process makes such a GUI installer most likely complicated and
as scary as the current process.

> On
> the other hand I like good looking things :-). I like a nice look and brand
> every once in a while and I think a good gui installer would look nice. The
> look is sometimes what attracts me to a distribution or one software choice
> over another (I know this sounds stupid). I mean if one piece of software
> sucks really badbut has a nice gui then I won't use it but if 2 r equal I'll
> choose the better looking one.

Isn't a simple GUI installer more attractive than a complicated one? I'd
rather go for the '5 steps to install Y' than the '27 and a 1/2 steps to
install Y' software. We're not aiming at our power users here, we're
aiming at the ones that make decisions based on looks alright.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Saturday 24 January 2004 01:47, foser wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 20:14, Scott Koch wrote:
> > I think the target should be users that are "new to Gentoo" switching
> > from other linux distributions.
>
> Yes maybe, probably coming from MDK, RH or Suse, those are usually
> pretty fresh linux users. What i really meant to say was that the people
> wanting a GUI installer are the same ones that have little actual linux
> knowledge (the 'i want it to be simple and just work' people) and not
> the more geekish crowd that Gentoo on the other side attracts. Those
> like their installs as it is, with the full power that comes with it.
> They don't want spiffy UI tools that only hide whats really going on. So
> you only have to target the first group.

I personally probably would use the installer for installing. I really have no 
desire for entering all the commands on the command line while a click on a 
button -> system installed works great with exactly the same result.

What might be an alternative would be a splitscreen installer that on the top 
of the screen offers a roadmap and a description on what to do. On the bottom 
is a commandline on which the actual commands can be given.

Paul

-- 
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Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-desktop-research] Installer's Target user group

[foser]

On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 11:45, Paul de Vrieze wrote:

> I personally probably would use the installer for installing. I really have no 
> desire for entering all the commands on the command line while a click on a 
> button -> system installed works great with exactly the same result.

Exactly. This installer is based on the GRP platform which afaik depends
on some meta packages to make the major choices. The installer should
follow those toplevel ebuild choices.

> What might be an alternative would be a splitscreen installer that on the top 
> of the screen offers a roadmap and a description on what to do. On the bottom 
> is a commandline on which the actual commands can be given.

That sounds like you just get the manual on top and have to give
commands at the bottom. I think what the installer should do is just
give a quick and easy path, people using an installer are probably not
interested in all those lowlevel commands (otherwise they wouldn't be
wanting to use it).

- foser


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