lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

[PCMan <pcman.tw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Currently the alternate CD contains a nice text-based installer.
What I suggested is to make a new installer based on the current one
in alternate cd.
However, the new installer only install the minimal base system + core
utils + X11 + gdm + drivers to harddisk. Then, reboot into X11 and
then we can launch a GUI installer from hard-disk to finish the
remaining parts, which can partially based on ubiquity. This solves
all the problems in an elegant way.

1. Text-based installer only does disk partitioning and install base
system. So actually nothing needs to be done by the user manually
except for disk partitioning. It's nearly automatic.

2. After rebooting, we boot from hard-disk into a clean X11 session
with only GUI installer running. So we're not running the live cd and
hence the memory usage can be ``minimal'', < 128 MB I guess. The GUI
installer is the only GUI programming running under X11 and we have no
running desktop environment, so it can use all the RAM available. So
we can write the GUI part without worrying about RAM usage. So
developing the GUI installer can be much easier than developing
ubiquity since memory usage is no more an issue. We can do what we
want easily in it.

Personally, I think this kind of installer is most suitable for our
system since it has good efficiency, functionality, smaller memory
footprint, and better reliability then running on live cd.

2011/3/31 Jorge Andrés Alvarez Oré <winninglero@xxxxxxxxx>:
> +1 alternate CD
> It´s suppose that the minimal memory for use Lubuntu is 192MB, but with
> 256MB to install it, it´s impossible to use it with a very old computer.
>
> My suggestion it´s to share a text install (alternate CD) by default. Anyway
> now Lubuntu isn't for beginners Linux user, so with a text install no body
> will be complicated. (My experience: the first Linux distro that i install
> [Ubuntu 7.04], i installed with the alternate CD, with my 256MB of ram
> memory [and Pentium 4 celeron] was impossible to install with GUI. Even if
> was my first install i could do it without a problem. The installations it´s
> intuitive.
> Sorry for my English.
> 2011/3/30 PCMan <pcman.tw@xxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> Text based installer + 1.
>> The alternate CD with console-based UI is good enough IMO if it can
>> have l10n user interface.
>> Windows installer has long been text-based since windows 3.1 and it's
>> still text-based in windows xp. Nobody complains of this so why should
>> we insist that there should be a graphical one?
>> Yes, if you boot from Windows xp installer cd on a machine without OS,
>> you'll enter text-based installer. The GUI part is only available
>> after the basic system is set up.
>>
>> Actually, we can do the same.
>> The text-based installer (part I) only installs base system and core
>> components and then reboot and automatically login X11 with a super
>> user. After boot, a GUI-based installer (part II) is launched and
>> continues the remaining parts. This can make things much easier.
>>
>> The only problem with this approach is, we cannot have a good
>> GUI-based UI for partitioning. Windows XP handle this in text-mode,
>> too. However, I see no real problem here. The rationale is quite
>> simple.
>>
>> Users who doesn't know how to use text-based UI are also the ones that
>> will almost always choose "automatic partitioning". Others who like to
>> use "customized" and "manual partitioning" are definitely advanced
>> power users who don't need a GUI installer.
>> So don't put 80% of development resources to do what only 20% people need.
>>
>> Please, if someone know how to work with the text-based debian
>> installer, consider this approach. Let's set up a base system with the
>> text-based one, and continue the remainng parts in a GUI installer
>> after rebooting into X11. This is also what Windows does.
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:56 PM, Jean-Pierre Vidal Piesset
>> <jpxsat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> >> Unfortunately, it will be very difficult to reduce the memory
>> >> >> footprint
>> >> >> of the installer for 11.04.
>> >>
>> >> The other question this poses is, is it really necessary to have a
>> >> graphical installer as the default for Lubuntu?
>> >
>> > Some time ago, there was a question on the mailing list "What do you
>> > expect
>> > from Lubuntu" and i think that a very important point is "it will go
>> > where
>> > Ubuntu can't" or something like that.
>> > A graphical installer is something that we do only one time (in theory)
>> > so
>> > if it's a little "ugly" (text) IMHO i don't see the problem.
>> > --
>> > jpxsat
>> >
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