[Mageia-dev] 3.0 release - some initial notes; failure

Tue Jan 8 18:11:14 CET 2013

On Tue, 2013-01-08 at 13:41 +0200, Shlomi Fish wrote:
+> Hi Liam,
+> 
+> let me reply to your E-mail - not necessarily disagreeing.
+
+Thanks!
+> 
+> On Mon, 07 Jan 2013 02:46:39 -0500
+> Liam R E Quin <liam at holoweb.net> wrote:
+> 
+> > Tried installing 3.0 beta over a Mandriva Cooker system today.
+> > Mageia-3-beta1-x86_64-DVD.iso
+> 
+> Can Mandriva Cooker be upgraded to Mageia 3? I don't think it can be (due to
+> Mandriva's switch to rpm5). Or do you mean you reformatted the relevant
+> partitions and installed a new system?
+
+It's a fresh install, sorry for not being clear.
+
+[...]
+
+> > On boot, there was a long delay followed by "Loading program" and a
+> > progress bar appearing and disappearing again almost before I had time
+> > to read the message. This didn't seem optimal.
+> 
+> I see. What are your system's specifications? I think I usually install from a
+> CD (just to have a working system) and then install more packages using urpmi. I
+> am downloading the DVD .iso now and will try it in a VirtualBox VM later to see
+> if I can reproduce any problems.
+
+It's several years old, HP Media Center m7680n with 8G of RAM,
+Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.1GHz, DDR2 533MHz memory.
+
+> > Choice of keyboard - there was a link to wikipedia in the Help text, but
+> > it gave me an error that there was no network. There are two entries for
+> > US Keyboard with no obvious reason, and a third for US International
+> > (which I chose since I'm not in the US :-)) 
+> 
+> Sounds like a bug or at least a problem in the installer. Can you file a bug
+> for it on https://bugs.mageia.org/ ?
+> 
+> > 
+> > I have 2 disk drives. the installer wanted to use the spare space on my
+> > Windows drive, when the other drive already had Linux. Yes, I could
+> > choose from the drop-down, but it wasn't clear that I was choosing where
+> > to put Mageia. Suggest add,
+> > Multiple disk drives found. Choose which one you want to use for the
+> > main Mageia system.
+> 
+> Sounds like a good enhancement.
+> 
+> > 
+> > The disk was formatted. That was actually what I wanted, in this case,
+> > but please add a warning that data will be lost - most humans on the
+> > planet won't know that.
+> 
+> Yes, true. Of course, you cannot expect your users to read:
+> 
+> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html
+
+No, but Mageia Linux's installer is obviously primarily intended at the
+experienced or dedicated hobbyist or the experienced system
+administrator.
+
+Long term, Magiea needs of course to target (1) people new to Linux,
+whether or not they are new to computers in general, and (2) programmers
+and packagers, to keep the distribution and community alive, whether or
+not they are administrators.  This double-headed focus was a lot of the
+success of Mandrake Linux and in fact led to a response from Red Hat -
+Fedora.
+
+
+> > There's no indication of how long the formatting will take, 
+[...]
+> > Suggest progress bar or at least some quotes from Moliére.
+> 
+> Heh. Well, formatting normally did not take too long for me, at least not in
+> its fast formatting mode. But maybe a progress bar will be doable.
+
+I said yes to doing a block scan.
+
+> Oh, bad block scan. :-(. It should be displayed in the graphical installer.
+Yes.
+
+
+> > I'm assuming the graphics and ugly font are not final. If they are, the
+> > pink stripes look like an error. Maybe caused by running my monitor
+> > (1920x1200/"deep colour") in 800x600 16-bit mode.
+> 
+> I'll see if it happens to me in the installer.
+> 
+> > 
+> > The long list of packages being installed - would be nicer to show the
+> > name of the current package, and its description, and more slowly to
+> > show a more detailed description of just one program.
+> 
+> By default the installer does not display the names of the packages installed I
+> think - just a progress bar.
+I don't think I did anything special to get the list of packages, but
+maybe.
+
+> > If there was a clear and obvious option to choose the LCD's native
+> > resolution, a font like Matthew Carter's Bitstream Charter Italic would
+> > look more sophisticated and also get more information on a line.
+> > 
+> 
+> Is it an open font.
+Not sure, it s distributed with the X Window System and xorg.
+We could use something from openfontlibrary too, that's a good point.
+
+> 
+> > Choosing a desktop - help said "broken link"
+> > 
+> 
+> Shouldn't the help be included inside the installer's media.
+
+Help is there for most other things.
+
+> 
+> > Choosing a desktop - please add versions, not just KDE, GNOME, Other.
+> > 
+> 
+> I'm not sure versions are a good idea because they may be confusing. I'm also
+> not sure many users who start with Linux will understand the difference between
+> KDE, GNOME or whatever, so maybe we should pick one or the other by default.
+
+Many people know whether they want gnome 2 or 3 right now, and for
+people who don't know the difference it's no more confusing.
+
+> 
+> > Also, I might want both KDE and GNOME installed, so I don't want to
+> > choose just one and not the other. If I'll get a chance to install more
+> > desktops later in the installer, please say so more clearly, not buried
+> > in help (once the link to help is fixed)...
+> 
+> Yes.
+
+(there was no such option during install)
+
+
+> > The installer seems much slower than it used to be, but maybe that's
+> > changes in rpm? Three hours to install packages is a long time. Although
+> > having said that, maybe the estimates were just wrong.
+> 
+> How strange. I was able to install Mageia 2 in a VM (from the Dual CD though)
+> in a few minutes.
+
+
+> > 
+> > At the end, several hours later, the DVD is ejected and the system tries
+> > to reboot...
+> > 
+> > PANIC cannot mount proc on /proc! Compile the kernel with
+> > CONFIG_PROC_FS!
+> > 
+> > Hmm. Well, I saw something go by about this on the mailing list so maybe
+> > I can fix it without another 7-hour download of the DVD image.
+> > 
+> > Overall, though, the installer needs a huge injection of "slickness".
+> > It's_almost_ there, but in graphic design "almost" doesn't get you a
+> > cigar.
+> 
+> That's true. By the way “GUI Design" is not graphic design.
+
+No, but graphic design is part of GUI design too :-) There are aspects
+that are subjectives and aspects that are to do with they way human
+vision and perception operate, which is why there are strong elements in
+common e.g. between Hindi, English, Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic.
+
+The things that make "slickness" are more or less constant across
+cultures: align things, treat similar things similarly, use contrast,
+compositional balance, proximity (I love Robin Williams' summary of
+these principles).
+
+Thank you for replying!
+
+Liam
+
+-- 
+Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
+Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
+Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml
+
+