On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:09:17 +0800
Bill Kenworthy <billk@...> wrote:


> 3. I think you seriously need to come up with an "enterprise strategy"
> and standardised installs with support rather than letting them go their
> own way (if that is possible).
> 


I think a better way towards a GUI installer would be a installer reading a file specifing how to install. Since the gentoo install instructions are pretty streamlined by now, it should be possible to generate a XML-file-scheme describing the process.
If that is done, it wouldn't be to hard to generate a Live-CD starting, for example the miniserv.pl from webmin with a web-based interface for the installer generating just a XML file and starting the installer (making it network-transparent on the fly).
Also it offers other options, like for example in a enterprise environment, you could have a live-CD identifying the system its boots up by the NIC, downloads a configuration from one central server and completes the install without user interaction. Thus, this might allow a pretty easy administration of a gentoo-farm ;-)
Ok, Im dreaming here.
The hardest part would be a flexible way to identify existing drives/partitions and resizing windows partitions to make it possible to use "generic" installer-files (things like "find the smaller drive, resize existing Windows-partition to 50% of the the drive-size ...") on different hardware.

I've been thinking about this for quite some time, but did not find the time to dig deeper into this ....

Greetz,

-- 
Björn Michaelsen
pub  1024D/C9E5A256 2003-01-21 Björn Michaelsen <bmichaelsen@...>
   Key fingerprint = D649 8C78 1CB1 23CF 5CCF  CA1A C1B5 BBEC C9E5 A256