Re: Newbie Idea

[Kevin Sproul <forgeltd@usa.net>]

JF Martinez wrote:
> 
> > Nope.  A friend of mine cried for 2 hours when Mandrake did this to
> > his Machine.  Why ?  It is his main box and he primarily plays on it.
> > He had Netware, NT-S, NT-W, Win-95 and 2 other Linux installations on
> > the system.
> >
> 
> THe Mandrake team is working in Paris.  I also know where they are,
> ask your friend if he wants I killl them ;-)

Make it look like an Accident :).
 
> > It shult be clear and obvious how to use a caned installation without
> > touching any existing partitions.  This means a screen in red that says
> > "We want to remove all existing partitions and install Linux.  If you
> > wish to keep some of the existing partitions and some of the data you
> > already have then you can manually select where to install".
> >
> 
> None of us ever dared to tesst the cannned installs and this will not
> change until we get a spare disk and disconnect the normal ones before
> installing.
> 
> It seemed me obvious the install should ask for confirmation (and I
> hoped the Mandrake/RedHat/Indy did it).  What I didn't think about was
> in modifying the install for making possible to not remove partitions.
> 
> > If he selects manual partitioning it drops you into something like that
> > program from RedHat 5.x.  He must still be able to run fdisk anyway.
> >
> > All this without affecting his choice of a "canned install" other than
> > to say whether he has declared enough space for the chosen install.
> >
> > You see a caned install is not simply a "brain free" installation.  It
> > is also a time saver for those who will be using most apps included
> > in the system, don't want just all the redundant junk and really have
> > things to do other than pick and choose through 500 RPMS.
> >
> 
> There is also an "Install everything" when ou selct by groups so
> server should _not_ be used for that purpose.  "Install everything"
> installs docs in Japanese and Indonesian thus it is great for learning
> foreign languages. :-)

No.  I have 3 Computers at home ( and a PS/2 which isn't a computer :).  
I have scattered among them All the X86 server OSs I could find.  This 
means  For each machine there are multiple OS.  each one I used what 
amounted to a caned server installation.  The only one that insisted 
on eating all my existing data was SCO.  I refuse to accept Linux 
sinking to the ease of use that SCO had in version 5.  Even Windows 
NT Let me pick and choose Partitions to format and load the OS on 
without disturbing other partitions unless specifically asked to.