Easy installation for lots of systems, how?

[ranger]

Maybe you guys remember the Wallmart boxes? I remember there was a review of them somewhere. Basically, they had an OEM install, and on first boot the user would get the last steps of the installation (set root password, add users, etc).

 

You really should first look at the documentation Mandrake provides.

 

# urpmi drakx-autoinstall-doc

 

(In contrib for 9.1)

[aRTee]

Hehe...

 

You really should first look at the documentation Mandrake provides.

 

# urpmi drakx-autoinstall-doc

 

rtfm,.... but you always have to know what is there... and no-one else here mentioned that one, so I just didn't know. I will have a look, and see if the original idea is feasible (mostly: if it is doable timewise for me).

 

Thanks a lot for that info. ;)

[Gowator]

aRTee.

What your thinking but not saying (I think) is that users coming from Windowland are used to having a OS forced on them they didn't want to pay for. In fact they are so used to it they forgot they were paying for it :-)

 

Personally, first thing I do is wipe the damned thing away, my laptop came with XP Home Edition, a real half assed attempt at an OS....

 

So PC manufacturer needs a standard (accepted) and a way to image the disks.

dd works fine !! Ive been doing it on Solaris for years.

The point is you image a working system, not the install.

 

Now the other bit.

The packages should be somewhere on the disk so the urmpi db needs updating.

Actually if you solve this (and thats not an area of my expertise at all). then kudzu does a pretty decent job of small changes.

A NIC or whatever is pretty automatic so you could have a choice of disk, CD/CDRW/DVD etc no problem.

 

If this were the case people would get a nice first experience of Linux in that it was working out of the box. I think its a good idea.

 

The bottom line is if I told my mum to go get a PC I'd want one working out of the box.

 

Root password.... tricky question but most of the config stuff sudo's. Set it to config or whatever. Macs do the same thing but seamlessly, like you said its only one more after the online passwords they have!

 

Michel has a good point on the mime stuff though. Your loking at stage one .. getting the users on a linux system but stage II is making sure they can use it and don't get bored and go out and buy Windoze.

 

You need to make sure its got language support for instance. This supposes you image a working system rather than the install and I think thats where Michel was getting. Then you need to decide swiss german or german german (same with french and italian). If you go for regional variants its less likely everything works seamlessly.

 

I think the point is why image the installation disks. Why not simply image a working system. As you said why wait to burn the CD's, what if the user doesn't have another PC hanging round. (Some people don't).

 

Then you take it home, plug in you keyb/mouse.screen and switch it on.

[aRTee]

Looks like I won't have time to really get around to doing this in a million years, but it's still nice to think about it,... if I lose my job or so, I'd have something to do... ;)

 

First: people who don't like linux will not go out and buy windows, they'll get a pirated copy. Still supportive of MS statistically, so no good.... :)

 

Second: the images on the hd were meant as in: images where mdk can install software from, if the user does urpmi I would like it not to ask for the cd's but just get that stuff from an iso image on the drive. That's why I mentioned that.

It would mean there's only one disc necessary with each system, and that only for a rescue, not to install any extra software from. You're actually saying the same thing: the packages should be on the hd.

Also, with the images on the hd, and automounted and added to the software/urpmi database, the user can still easily burn them to cd to do an install on another machine, if they want to.

So yes, my idea was to image the whole usable system!

 

Third: as for languages, I've been using multilanguage installs and they work fine (got English Dutch French German Italian Spanish on my box), also not a big problem to switch.

 

Agree completely with the 'out of the box' idea.

 

On top of that, it would be a pc that's advertised as Linux -- for those who dare ;)

(don't know how to put it, but if you present things the right way, especially young people are more motivated; if everyone can do it, they often have little interest)

Maybe: "for the poweruser" would be nice.

 

For any average windows user (computer n00b) it is quite a bit nicer to have a person around who knows linux (unix)....

[Gowator]

aRTee,

I think the big thing is how to get people to take a first step and stay there. The most important part is keeping the new users happy and not loosing them.

 

I had an funny experience with another UNIX guy at work where we are all forced to using Windoze crap for MSBloatWare and Lotus Notes. The upshot was the guy turned round and said you unix guys, I don't know how you do it, its so complicated. We just looked at each other. :?:

 

The big hurdle for me is how to tell my mum to get down to a vendor and take a box home, plug it in and swtich it on. Apple have managed to do that. Lindows have to up to a point but it relies on fast unmetered internet and running everything as root. I read the for and against arguments and lets face it, if you drive into a country where seatbelts are not compulsary you don't take them off.

 

Now advertising .... I think it would be on two front. Look at Apple! IMAC, well call it an Internet Surfer+ or something.... Then you catch the market of people who basically want an internet applicance. Then go on to advertise the + part, like includes software to edit your MS office documents ....

 

Then you have the 'intermediate' users who might want to rip CD's, MP3's etc. maybee host a web site and that sort of stuff.

 

Once you get to advanced users I disagree with Michels arguments, they might buy a pre-installed system for convenience but then they'd want to reinstall it, re partition it etc. so fine they go and buy Powerpack or whatever.

 

Anyway, I think something like an XBOX crack might be a good idea. You have a CD capable of completely reinstalling the default (the rescue disk you talked about but the actual distro is located on the HDD.

 

For the real newbies you need to stick with the basic stuff. Like one office suite, one browser (Konqueror?) etc. and have the other stuff installable through RPMDRAKE. I know this is limiting but it does at least help make it simpler. Your real problem comes on hardware support. Say you add a webcam, scanner, printer. The whole thing is pretty easy if its supported by a module but as soon as it isn't automatically configured theyre lost. Apple can only do it becuase they control the HW ..

 

Another decision is do you include the PLF stuff, I mean for me its unusable without it. I wannna make MP3's becuase they play on my DVD player, Archos Multimedia player etc. Ogg doesn't. (p.s. TF1 are to offer Ogg streaming audio next to MP3 :-))

 

I think what your suggesting is easily possible but it needs to have boundaries set. This is actually a frequent discussion between me and a close friend who wants to get rid of all his MS stuff at work (and he's European IT manager for a big multinational so thats a lot of PC's).

 

Anyway, and this will be a controversial point. I'm looking at doing it for fun but I can't see how to make it simple with RPM's. There are just too many dependencies that aren't satisfied etc. Before you comment try installing DVD rip on a vanilla Mandrake distro. you end up with the dependency chain reaction syndrome. It's like OK, i'll get avifilexxxx then you try and install that and you have to get something else then something else. So you have two alterntives, PLF or compile from source. Actually you can keep on stuggling and eventually get there but by this time you mightest well recompile.

So Im seriously thinking of doing it with debian. Its a big step for me cos Ive no experience in Debian at all. ....

 

Thoughts or comments ?

[aRTee]

I will comment more tonight (hey I have work to do here), but as far as the PLF stuff goes, yes, no Mdk should be without.

 

I did it the easy way: just did all installation + config + extra plf stuff, then installed a whole bunch, including dvd-rip and libdvdcss2 etcetc, with

urpmi --noclean [program]

then just took all the stuff in the standard urpmi download dir (forgot where it puts those files), and burnt the 3 cds of the download edition, but the second and 3rd got the extra files (100MB all together, includes java, mozilla-java, realplayer, octave, opera, etcetc).

 

Then I tell my friends who get these 3 special cd's that they just have to plunk those extra files from disc 2 and 3 in a dir, and add that as a removable repository.

 

Then urpmi works fine again. No cable necessary.

;)