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On Saturday 10 November 2007 01:42:04 am Daniel Barkalow wrote: |
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> On Thu, 8 Nov 2007, James wrote: |
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> > If you do not like my opinion, you should look at what Daniel Robbins |
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> > had to say, as I ran across a posting of his today, about this very |
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> > issue. An awesome collection of techies does not gravitate users |
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> > to join the ranks of distro users. A (easy) graphical installation |
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> > method is a requirement. Gentoo get's tons of bad reviews, |
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> > based on the installation process. |
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> |
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> Personally, I think a graphical installer for Gentoo is a bad idea (yes, |
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> including the current one). What I want to see is: |
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> |
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> 1) Boot off of live CD |
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> 2) ROOT=/mnt/sda1 emerge system |
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> 3) ROOT=/mnt/sda1 emerge <other packages> |
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> 4) Reboot without CD |
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> |
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----snip---- |
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One of the strong points of Gentoo is also one of it weaknesses... you can |
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do "a thing" in so many, many different ways. A lot of us like/love that |
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complexity. Some of us don't and a lot of new Gentoo users absolutely hate |
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it... |
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Early on, in my love affair with Gentoo, I took the install manual and wrote a |
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bash script that does all the steps needed to get to a bootable skeleton on |
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the target harddrive. It was my way to beat sitting at the console, reading |
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the manual and typing in what I read. I did have a lot of previous Linux |
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experience with Open Caldera Linux. |
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I agree with you, you don't really need a GUI for that... but it does "sell |
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the product" to new users. Wether we like it or not, we need new blood (new |
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users) to keep the Gentoo momentum going. And that new blood is mostly coming |
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from the windows ranks... you know... point, point, clickey clickey... There |
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is a bit of a migration going on now, from windows to "something else". We |
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should be trying to be a part of that "something else". After all, RedHat, |
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PCLinuxOS, etc... maybe not be the answer for some of these new users. |
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That said, we really do need a KILLER GUI install tool for those that need it |
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and the rest of us can use a CLI... |
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You know, it should be possible to write a bash script to facilitate a |
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complete Gentoo install session and that install script could then be used as |
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the "guts" of a slick GUI interface for those that need it. |
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-- |
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From the Desk of: Jerome D. McBride |
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-- |
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