Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Installer (2) [LARGE]

[Alexander Gretencord]

On Monday 03 June 2002 03:22, William Kenworthy wrote:
> It is also worth keeping in mind that expert/poweruser does not mandate
> always using command line, manual, prone to human error methods. GUI's
> can be very fast and efficient at certain tasks, and anything that can
> help produce a quick, clean and efficient install (which arguably gentoo
> isnt) can only be of benefit.

As you said, for "certain tasks".

It is certainly good to display a tree of dependencies as an actual tree so 
you see what deps come from other deps. In the flat structure emerge displays 
them now you have to look at the ebuilds yourself to see this.

Partitioning a drive can be made easier or more appealing with a graphical 
representation but you can also just do the math and enter the numbers 
directly. This time it's just a question of the users preference. I like it 
better to enter the numbers directly (you don't have to do the blocks math 
and you should really know how many MB per partition you want so there's no 
need for a GUI, unless you're new to Linux, come from Windows and like to see 
a graph for everything you do :))

A quick install with all the settings you chose the last time would be great 
though if you know how you wanna setup your box but don't wanna type 
everything yourself. But still this has to be an addon just as the anaconda 
GUI would be so you can do the install the way you want it, all by hand. But 
especially for the gentoo server distribution a quick way to install a new 
box would be great (--usepkg + scripting for partitioning and what packages 
to install).

See I have my router in the basement all setup myself the gentoo way (I liked 
it pretty much although I have setup my workstation and the gameserver the 
same way before :)). Now suppose I wanna help my neighbour get on the net. 
With RedHat (or any other distro) I'd just insert the boot floppy the setup 
can make and have the exact same configuration as on my router.

> I can say it is a bit painful, particularly if you make a typo
> (e.g., get the grub boot partition wrong!) or switch screens so you
> cannot pageup and see what network card was detected etc).

Well there's always the bootcd with which you can fix it. For the netcard 
theres dmesg as well as your knowledge. You do know what network card you 
installed into your system don't you ? :)

Alex