On Wed, 2010-07-07 at 21:56 -0400, Robert Myers wrote:
On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 7:22 PM, Timothy Murphy
<gayleard(a)eircom.net>
wrote:
It really would be helpful if developers could make sure
that some kind of message, even if it is just a row of dots,
comes up from time to time.
The most general response to your request would appear to require
violation of the Halting Theorem. I think you could force a dot with
an interrupt, but it wouldn't really tell you anything. The program
could still be hung.
As it is, the problem is even more complicated than what is
contemplated by the Halting Theorem, since an installer depends on
expected responses from hardware. If the response never comes...
You could be getting dot dot dot, and it wouldn't mean a thing. Sort
of like waiting for Godot.
If some poor soul at Microsoft couldn't deliver a version of Vista
that reassured Steve Ballmer (who allegedly throws furniture) that
wonderful new Vista was actually doing something while he sat there
and waited with an important customer, do you think this problem will
be solved by the FOSS community?
----
this has nothing to do with whatever MS does or doesn't do - we are
simple creatures and comforted with simple things like some indication
of progress.
I agree with Ed - file an RFE against preupgrade for progress indicators
along the way (though I do remember seeing progress indications when
under GTK so I gather this is after reboot and during automatic
installation phase and it probably was already contemplated).
Craig
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