With Redhat 5.0 and 5.2 (I never installed 5.1), I used to demonstrate to
people who feared Unix installations how easy and fast it was to install
RedHat Linux. We had a P133 machine lying around and I would show people
that after a few initial steps, the simple "workstation" install would then
take about 15-20 minutes even on such a slow machine, much easier and
quicker than an NT install.
When 6.0 came along, I did an "upgrade" on that same machine (again taking
the "workstation" defaults) and it took well over an hour --- I think it
was close to TWO hours. I suspected that may have been due to the extra
checks and other manipulations needed for "upgrading", so I tried doing an
"install" instead of an upgrade -- it STILL took about the same amount of
time. When 6.1 came along, the installation was still worse. Admittedly
the default workstation installation installed more items in 6.x compared
to 5.x, but that difference wouldn't come close to explaining the time
difference. Last week, I did a 6.1 trial install (workstation again) on a
600 Mhz Intel PIII machine. I left before it finished, but it had run for
over an hour before I left.
Can anyone explain why the installation time has soared so much? Is this
related to "anaconda"? Would it be faster to do a bare bones minimum
custom install and then just feed a list to rpm to do the rest? Is the
problem really with RPM?
The "workstation" and "server" configurations aren't all that useful to
me, but they seem like reasonable things for people who have never
installed Linux before, so I used them as demos to show people how
easy and quick the installation process could be (at least in 5.x).
Another question -- the selection of items for custom install seems to
be more painful than it used to be. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I
remember custom installs being easier in earlier versions.
I went through several custom installs on one machine before finding out
there was a hardware problem on the machine. One thing that would be
very nice to have would be the opportunity to save the selected
configuration to a floppy before actually starting the install. In
that way, if I had to do the install again or do a similar install on
another machine, I could save lots of effort by starting with defaults
being the previously saved configuration.
Another thing that would be helpful would be to allow use of fdisk in
all installation modes -- or an option in Disk Druid to escape to fdisk.
It seems like dealing with Disk Druid is always a struggle and fdisk
is much simpler and does what you ask it to do.
pete peterson
GenRad, Inc.
7 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886-0033
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
+1-978-589-7478 (GenRad); +1-978-256-5829 (Home: Chelmsford, MA)
+1-978-589-2088 (Closest FAX); +1-978-589-7007 (Main GenRad FAX)
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