lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

["Ali Linx (amjjawad)" <amjjawad@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Nio,

Thank you for the time and effort you are contributing to our community
since you joined us until now. I'm really, really, really glad to have
someone like you among us. We do need more people like you ;)

If you don't mind, I'd like to share my opinion.

This is all great and nice (without going deep in technical details) but
I'm afraid we are missing a very important note.

Those users are Fresh New Beginners Users that most likely never ever heard
or seen or used Linux in their entire life. If they have, they wouldn't
still use Windows XP and will still use it until May, 2014 :)

So, these approaches may find their place among us as average and above
average Linux/Lubuntu Users but IMHO, and hope you don't get me wrong, this
is too much for them.

We need to make the migration process as easy as piece cake.
Any further technical step, they will be lost :P :D

Anyway, I promise you that once I will have the time (not sure when? :( ) I
will give that a test or maybe it is better we find someone who is new to
Linux and give him/her this. Whatever feedback will come, it will help us
to know whether they will be happy or not :D

Please don't take my comment as anything negative. I do love the energy you
are showing but I'd like also to be on the same page.
KISS = Keep It Simple and Short.

This is the success key in our holy mission :D

Thanks!


On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> I think the end of life of Windows XP is a great opportunity for
> Lubuntu, and I really hope the Lubuntu community will be happy receiving
> [many] new people.
>
> Will they be happy installing Lubuntu in less than 100 seconds?
>
> - Installing in a simple and straight-forward way.
> - Not yet polished, but simple from the ground.
>
> I was kind of frustrated, that in order to succeed with low RAM, most if
> not all degrees of freedom are lost, and yet the [graphical desktop]
> installer feels quite unstable. Yes, I admit that is is much better than
> before with zRAM, but anyway, if there are no degrees of freedom you
> might as well run a simple deterministic shell-script.
>
> So I made almost a one-button installer (there are a few yes-no
> questions, and a simple cli selector to make it easier to find the
> correct target drive). This installer is run from a 'grub-n-iso-swap'
> system from
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/grub-n-iso
>
> I installed a system from a USB 3 pendrive to a USB 3 HDD in less than 1
> minute and 40 seconds (including answering those questions). Here are
> the computer specs.
>
> http://www.toshiba.se/laptops/satellite-pro/c850/satellite-pro-c850-19w/
>
> I hope that it will work well also with old computers, where the
> standard installers tend to be slow.
>
> I created the system on the IDE hard drive of my old AMD Athon XP, and
> made the tarball from it, so it was ported across time and
> manufacturer's barriers without any problems.
>
> I think this way might be easy enough for Windows XP users.
>
> The script does the following main tasks.
>
> 1. Helps selecting the correct drive with some logic and simple command
> line tools.
>
> 2. Unmounts and swaps off.
>
> 2. Wipes the first megabyte with dd.
>
> 3. Creates two partitions with fdisk (fully automatic).
>
> 4. Makes a file system and swap system.
>
> 5. Expands a tarball of a freshly installed Lubuntu Saucy alpha
> including updates and third party multimedia (2.1 Gibibytes uncompressed).
>
> 6. Installs the grub bootloader.
>
> I have attached a text file with some output from the text. I timed it
> with the following command:
>
> time sudo ./mktst
>
> and it responded with
>
> real    1m38.621s
> user    0m22.692s
> sys     0m8.576s
>
> And finished with a fully working portable Lubuntu installed system.
>
> Beat that record if you can :-)
>
> Yes, you can, because I'm happy to share the script, and the computer is
> fairly new, but not really fancy, so with a faster computer and an SSD
> target (or SSD source and target) it will be easy to reduce the time.
>
> The attached script has two lines commented away (just for the test),
> but if you want to use it in serious situations, you should reactivate
> them, because they help selecting the correct target drive.
>
>  #####lshw -class disk >> "$hlptxt"
>
>  ##### xterm -geometry 120x40 -title "less $hlptxt" -e less "$hlptxt" &
>
> Best regards
> Nio
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: One button installer for Lubuntu
> Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 01:42:59 +0200
> From: Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: Ali Linx (amjjawad) <amjjawad@xxxxxxxxx>
> CC: Phill Whiteside <PhillW@xxxxxxxxxx>,  Jonathan Marsden
> <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Hi,
>
> Is there a way to make a simple mode to install, provided the whole
> drive is to be used, as it is intended in the case of replacing Windows
> in fairly old computers with 256 (and 512) MB RAM?
>
> First I was thinking of some kind of 'batch mode', without questions,
> once you have connected to the computer. It should install to the first
> drive.
>
> But I have good experiences of the portability of installed systems on
> USB drives. So I would rather do it like this:
>
> 0. Assume there is one internal drive (/dev/sda), and that it should be
> converted to Lubuntu. (Otherwise other methods should be used.)
>
> 1. Fill the drive with
>
> 1.1 a root partition and
> 1.2 a swap partition, size = sizeofRAM + 1GB
>
> 2. Expand a compressed image of Lubuntu
>
> See this example
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstalledSystemFakePAE
>
> where there is actually only one crucial command line
>
> zcat dd-sdb.img.gz | dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sda
>
> I do not assume we should use that version off the shelf. It was made
> for a special reason and limited size. Writing first the bootloader and
> then the partition /dev/sda1 from a tarball should do it within a short
> script. The host name and user name are easily fixed with a button on
> the desktop after installation (let the original user be the admin and
> make a new one). A button would be the solution for the proprietary
> software too, for graphics as well as for multimedia.
>
> I don't have it but I could write that script, there is no need for
> advanced programming languages if text mode is accepted. But today it
> would imply a 2GB USB drive.
>
> I have not learned how to make the iso for a boot CD. I know of
> Remastersys, maybe it still works, but I'm sure Canonical has better
> tools. So returning to the first idea about a batch mode: Maybe it would
> be fairly simple to add a one-button mode to the alternate installer or
> the mini.iso wizard shell (to set all the other variables, if that mode
> is selected).
>
> -o-
>
> One reason I started thinking about this is that most degrees of freedom
> of the installer are cut off anyway, in order to succeed, when
> installing into low RAM. And if you have to press certain buttons in a
> certain order, it is better to have it fully automatic.
>
> And the the plans of the city council in Munick inspire ideas to make it
> even easier to install Lubuntu.
>
> What about a
>
> *One button installer for Lubuntu*
>
> to make it easy enough to receive a mass migration from Windows XP
>
> Best regards
> Nio
>
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>


-- 

"All of us are smarter than any one of us."

*Best Regards,*
*amjjawad <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/amjjawad/>*
*Start Ubuntu<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/CommunicationsTeam/WOWLubuntu/StartUbuntu>
*
*My Own Business <http://alilinx.blogspot.com/>*