Re: SEUL: Migration, and a brief recap

[William T Wilson <fluffy@dunadan.com>]

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Paul Anderson wrote:

> Everything waits for the installer.  It's not a distribution without the
> installer, most discussion is moot until we have a good working installer.

No, not at all.  We don't need an installer until we're ready to ship the
first version.  There's a lot of things to do, mostly software
configuration.  An installer is basically just a giant
package-tool-and-hardware-detector-wielding script.

> Someone here care to work out a config for XF86 that'll work on
> everything?

bwahahahahahahh.  You seek the holy grail, sir knight!  Standard VGA with
plain FVWM of course will work on everything.  The only problem will be
the mouse, which will require users to either know what they have, or for
us to check the kernel ring buffer.  That'd be my suggestion.  The kernel
will identify any bus-mouse at boot, and it's not too difficult to
identify a serial-mouse by setting the port to 1200 baud and seeing
whether it acts like a mouse or not.  :) 

> You can do useful stuff with an 80Meg disk, but it's tight.  1Gig disks
> are too small to be bought these days, 4Gig HDs are the norm for new
> computers.  Not everyone has a new computer, AAMOF.

Hm, I wouldn't want to call an 80MB disk useful.  Usability first, system
requirements second.  I think we should build a good distribution and then
see how big it is, rather than the other way around.

> MOST servers will be included in SEUL/Server.  Security will be more of a
> concern with the server, the server package will also have an irc server,
> gopher, etc.

I'm not talking about the server version.  I'm talking about servers
which are either fantastically easy to set up, like apache, or necessary
to meet Win95 on an equal footing, like SAMBA.  I'm not even thinking
about the server version.  This is an end-user distribution.  That's what
SEUL stands for, don't forget.  We'll do the companion server later.

> An unattended install would also be a good idea to implement - for
> computer stores, should they ever wish to install SEUL on machines to be
> sold:)

Blah, you keep coming up with more work!  Stop, we have enough!  :)  An
unattended install is as simple as mounting your "template" system over
NFS and copying it; as a saner method, you could make a tarfile of the
installed system and just unpack it on your destination computer.

> > 3.2) It must be able to install graphically.  Like Windows, which installs
> > 
> Before it boots of the disk, the install will be text only.

Before it boots off the disk, the install will be little bits of ferrite
only.  Like Win95, the first thing we should do is build a generic-VGA
X-server and run some (statically linked?) install scripts off the CD or
other mass/network-media on it.

> Well, just so as happens that when the kernel boots it doesn't say a word
> about mice.

Doesn't say a word about SERIAL mice.  It will happily detect and
report bus mice including PS/2 mice (which, I believe, are rather the more
common type on Pentium systems).

> Install will be single-disk, because RH's install is single disk.

Depends on your installation method, of course.  I don't consider this
even vaguely critical.  If we run over then we run over.

We shouldn't, because we should always have either the CD or NFS available
to us.  But if we do, then we do.  Why worry?

> The earlier versions of Win95(yes, there have been multiple versions)
> didn't natively even support PPP!  TTYL!

Okay, but they do now.  We're not competing with the beta...