Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote:
I agree with David the installer should not support that and also frown upon that practice.
I also think that once the novice end user has choose in his DE in the installer he should only be presented with packages/applications targeted specifically for that desktop environment if he should be presented with options to install additional packages et al...
The package set on the DVD is currently chosen to allow essentially everything to be installed at once (with transient exceptions such as samba3/4), hence the repoclosure and file conflicts tests. If the installer itself is going to make this difficult (kickstart? I've never had to use that) or impossible, then these tests should be modified accordingly. Or maybe the DVD could be split into multiple versions, one for each desktop. Or the DVD could be done away with entirely. If we intend to go down this path (and I personally hope not) I think these issues should be resolved *before* the installer is changed to make it hard to use the DVD the way it's currently designed to be used, especially if it's not being done to simplify the installer code, or to prevent users from doing something that's clearly wrong (since lots of applications are targeted to one desktop but are useful on others), but purely for coercive purposes (similar to Gnome Shell and no obvious Power Off option).
and experience users that want to run multiple DE's can already install another one once they have successfully finished installing the distribution.
Which is a waste of bandwidth, if the packages were already on the DVD but the installer made it hard or impossible to use them. It's possible to get them by setting up the DVD as a repo after installation, if one is careful not to update first, but why should that be necessary?
P.S. Sorry for not replying in-thread, but Gmane has been dead since July 2 (later posts don't show up).
Andre Robatino (robatino@fedoraproject.org) said:
The package set on the DVD is currently chosen to allow essentially everything to be installed at once (with transient exceptions such as samba3/4), hence the repoclosure and file conflicts tests. If the installer itself is going to make this difficult (kickstart? I've never had to use that) or impossible, then these tests should be modified accordingly. Or maybe the DVD could be split into multiple versions, one for each desktop. Or the DVD could be done away with entirely. If we intend to go down this path (and I personally hope not) I think these issues should be resolved *before* the installer is changed to make it hard to use the DVD the way it's currently designed to be used, especially if it's not being done to simplify the installer code, or to prevent users from doing something that's clearly wrong (since lots of applications are targeted to one desktop but are useful on others), but purely for coercive purposes (similar to Gnome Shell and no obvious Power Off option).
The DVD isn't designed to be used at all. That's the problem.
It offers you a list of groups, and expects you to put them together into a coherent OS. This doesn't really work unless you have some idea of how they function already.
The point of this is exactly that - to prevent the user doing something silly like trying to install GNOME but forgetting the X server and fonts.
Bill
to prevent the user doing something silly like trying to install GNOME but forgetting the X server and fonts.
I think the Package Manager copes with this very well, especially when the installation source is a release DVD. Unlike the network repositories, which can become inconsistant as individual packages are updated, the DVD presumably has gone through freeze and test cycles that greatly reduce, and hopefully eliminate, cases where some sets of packages cannot be installed because of unsatisfied or antagonistic depencencies.
If a user makes silly choices about what to include during initial Fedora installation, the result should be no worse than some missing applications, or extra files on disk and possibly additional choices that have to be made during use because multiple environments have been installed.
Perhaps it is the GNOME/X-server example, which seems to be precisely what package dependencies handle, that obscures the point you want to make.
Richard Ryniker (ryniker@alum.mit.edu) said:
Perhaps it is the GNOME/X-server example, which seems to be precisely what package dependencies handle, that obscures the point you want to make.
Except, they don't.
The desktops do not require an X server; they could be run remotely. The desktops do not require a set of fonts; they merely require the presence of a font.
So, it is possible (and has been done, and has caused bug reports) to just pick a basic desktop group and not get the infrastructure you need to actually run a local desktop.
Bill
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Andre Robatino -
Bill Nottingham -
Richard Ryniker