On Saturday 10 November 2007 01:42:04 am Daniel Barkalow wrote: > On Thu, 8 Nov 2007, James wrote: > > If you do not like my opinion, you should look at what Daniel Robbins > > had to say, as I ran across a posting of his today, about this very > > issue. An awesome collection of techies does not gravitate users > > to join the ranks of distro users. A (easy) graphical installation > > method is a requirement. Gentoo get's tons of bad reviews, > > based on the installation process. > > Personally, I think a graphical installer for Gentoo is a bad idea (yes, > including the current one). What I want to see is: > > 1) Boot off of live CD > 2) ROOT=/mnt/sda1 emerge system > 3) ROOT=/mnt/sda1 emerge <other packages> > 4) Reboot without CD > ----snip----
One of the strong points of Gentoo is also one of it weaknesses... you can do "a thing" in so many, many different ways. A lot of us like/love that complexity. Some of us don't and a lot of new Gentoo users absolutely hate it... Early on, in my love affair with Gentoo, I took the install manual and wrote a bash script that does all the steps needed to get to a bootable skeleton on the target harddrive. It was my way to beat sitting at the console, reading the manual and typing in what I read. I did have a lot of previous Linux experience with Open Caldera Linux. I agree with you, you don't really need a GUI for that... but it does "sell the product" to new users. Wether we like it or not, we need new blood (new users) to keep the Gentoo momentum going. And that new blood is mostly coming from the windows ranks... you know... point, point, clickey clickey... There is a bit of a migration going on now, from windows to "something else". We should be trying to be a part of that "something else". After all, RedHat, PCLinuxOS, etc... maybe not be the answer for some of these new users. That said, we really do need a KILLER GUI install tool for those that need it and the rest of us can use a CLI... You know, it should be possible to write a bash script to facilitate a complete Gentoo install session and that install script could then be used as the "guts" of a slick GUI interface for those that need it. -- From the Desk of: Jerome D. McBride -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
