Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 24 January 2005 17:46, Scot L. Harris wrote:
>On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 17:28, Jeff Vian wrote:
>> Exactly my point.
>>
>> It seems Gene and others would like fdisk as one of the options
>> during the install instead of *forcing* all those who have no clue
>> about getting to a shell (Shall we say newbies) to use only the
>> one tool someone has deemed safe (DD) or allowing it to
>> autopartition.  Both of which choose their own way of organizing
>> the partitons, and it seems to me that autopartitioning uses LVM
>> (in addition to destroying existing partitions), which may not be
>> ideal for some.
>>
>> What I do not understand is why choices are being removed from
>> menus and hidden.  I thought this was about freedom to choose, as
>> well as making it attractive and easy for new users.
>
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>
>I think the idea is to make it relatively easy for new users.  And
> the best way to do that is provide defaults that work for 90% or
> better of most users.  For those that have progressed beyond
> "newbie" stage and fall in that 10% of users that have legitimate
> requirements for non-standard setups or just plain want to mess
> with their systems it should not be to hard to expect them to spend
> a little time reading the release notes and other documentation
> that is widely available on the web or at the book stores.
>
>If you present a complex list of options for a new user who for the
> most part has NOT read the release notes or any other documentation
> for that matter, they will invariably start poking the buttons and
> frobbing the knobs which generally results in a sub-optimal install
> or at worst a seriously broken system.
>
>I think many people forget that new users don't have the many years
> of experience that many people on this list seem to have.  And by
> limiting the initial set of choices for new users a better
> experience can be delivered that is a good thing.  The new user
> gets the immediate gratification that most users want with very
> little sweat involved. Those that progress to the next stage and
> research questions they have will find a whole lot more options
> available behind the curtain that would have perplexed and confused
> them at first.
>
>So how about we leave this topic where it began, Disk Druid works
> for a large percentage of the user base and fdisk is available for
> the experienced user if it is needed.

All very well and good Scot, provided one can do an ctl+alt+F2 and get 
a shell.  At the time I was stymied and came unwrapped about being 
forced to use DD against my will, all a ctl+alt+Fx would get me is a 
blank screen with no prompt.  I've repeated that install several 
times also, and it seems it works about half the time over a several 
day period.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.