11.2 KDE4, First impressions, a rambling ramble..

English Open Chat
1

Before I begin I want to say that this is by no means a complaint, bug report or even request for assistance, although of course your comments and ideas are very welcome, as always. I thought I would approach this as a new to openSuse or even new to Linux/fresh from MS type of person, who might have got a Live CD from college or somewhere and decided to give it a try. My thoughts and suggestions should be read in that light…

I downloaded via Bittorrent the KDE live CD and also the DVD, (Why is DVD i586 and the CD i686? Have I downloaded the wrong one for my 32 bit systems?) mainly to help with seeding as I am not quite ready for a full install just yet, I still have to shuffle some partitions around so that my media files in windows are in the right place, so I can then shrink my NTFS Windows install partition to a bare minimum, install 11.2 alongside it, move my 11.1 set up alongside that, THEN wipe the disk where 11.1 currently lives, THEN clone/move Win XP to the now empty disk, then somehow get GRUB (GRUB2? Clonezilla?) to recognise them all and come up with a booting scheme !!! = no Christmas holiday for me :frowning: :frowning:

However, with the .iso safely down, I could not resist a sneaky look, so I decided to install the DVD to a VBOX virtual machine. I have the following observations:

[ol]
[li] The very first screen offers, as first option “Boot from Hard Drive”. This surely is counter-intuitive, this should be second, “Install” should come first?? After all, we have nothing to boot from on our hard drive as yet, and clicking this would simply return us to MS Windows or whatever we currently boot to. Those of us who know how long it can take for Windows to boot far enough to turn it off again will know how maddening this can be… Sceptical new users might decide to do something else at this point, and may not return…
[/li]
[li]Like many others, I am sure, I am a bit nervous when installing a fresh OS, and although impatient to try it I tend to indulge in ‘displacement activity’ before I get enough courage to hit the ‘GO’ button. Therefore Media check and Firmware check are irresistible buttons for me to press. I hit Media check… made tea, had breakfast, had a shower, had a shave, had a bath, did the washing up, read the paper, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. still not completed! No activity on the screen… Has it hanged? Frozen? Is my new install borked already? Fallen at first hurdle? Anyway I had previously check md5sums of the .iso, and was installing directly from the .iso on HDD (I had not burned it to a disk) so I was fairly confident that it was ok so I aborted the check. Can I suggest to the developers that the media check be refined to give the user more info, and more choices, for instance: [ul]
[/li][li]‘Simple md5 check’
[/li][li]‘Simple sha-1 check’
[/li][li]‘Complete integrity check… this may take a VERY long time’
[/li][/ul] And also have some kind of simple animation (the progress bar was, if it was moving was moving so slow as to not be noticable) so that new users do not assume that something has gone wrong, and abandon the idea before even beginning?
Anyway, next I hit ‘firmware check’, I get some guff about this being only for pointy heads and king penguins, but I let it go ahead anyway and am worried by a long list of “FAIL” messages. These may well have been because I was installing to a vBox, but even so, a new user might conclude that his system was not suitable and give up there. If this function is really only for ubergeeks, could it not be tucked away, out of sight, where only they would find it and only they would use it when needed?
[li] On then to ‘install’… Do two pages really constitute a slide-show? Come on folks, some pretty pictures of KDE4 in action etc surely? Anyhow I prefer to watch the action, even if I do not understand much of it …
[/li]One of the first messages that flicks past is ‘setting disk label to msdos’ (!) what’s that about then?
[li]The rest of my experiences are, I am afraid terribly negative due to the whole thing being hooooooorrrrrrrrrriiiiibbbbbbllllllllyyyyyyy ssssslllloooooowwwwww. I later realised that this was something to do with my Vbox implementation (I have the same probs, believe it or not with Win98 in vBox, which should of course be blazing fast, but is unusable, XP however works fine, my bad I suppose) Maybe developer types could talk to SUN or even release a pre-packaged vBOX set up so that people are not discouraged by problems which are nothing to do with openSuse 11.2. Or maybe a kindly forum type and openSuse/vBox guru with too much time on their hands (you know who you are, it’s no use hiding behind that tree, Caf) could write a ‘For Dummies’ walkthrough and troubleshooting guide. I would be happy to send or publish all details of my set up and vBox arrangements so we could get to the bottom of this. Anyway, the install took just over two hours, not including the failed/aborted media check, obviously not good…
[/li]Watching boring stuff flicker past, I noticed that a lot of it was installing cruft guff and rubbish for which I have no need or desire. This is Microsoft-style ‘chuck the kitchen sink at it’ tactics, and is one of the reasons I stopped using MS, having loads of stuff on my machine for which I have no need. A couple of examples:
Open Office Suite. I am sure that it is a wonderful suite but I don’t want it. Why is it installed without my consent? I recently tidied up my XP set up and realised that of my complete Office 2000 suite I have never used Power point, Access, Excel, Movie maker, Outlook etc etc etc. I am pretty sure I will not need their counterparts in OOS either. I might once a year use Writer or whatever it is called, I can get by 90% of the time with AbiWord and Mousepad TYVM.
The Gimp. I know many penguin heads swear by it and love it, and I am sure it is great, but I hate it and don’t want it, I don’t want filetypes associated with it, don’t want the blasted leviathan groaning into life whenever I click on a .PDF or .jpeg or .png. Open source is about choice surely, give me choice please!
[li] Lastly for now; (My readers: “!You mean there’s MORE Wakou?” Me: “Oh yes my children, stay tuned for the next exciting episode!”)
[/li]When I eventually got up and running I get an update message, NP, I allow. It is a set of fonts, no problem there, but then an ‘error’ message
‘Cannot find suitable fonts for Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Burmese, Farsi, Hindi, Klingon etc etc.’
Now I do not speak read or write any of these beautiful languages, and have no need for fontage to render them. If I later decide that learning Linux is not taking up enough of my time and brain-power (!), and embark on learning one of them I am sure I could pretty soon work out for myself how to get them on to my screen. Again, why is it ASSUMED that I want them installed?
[/ol]

To be continued… You have been warned!

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The very first screen offers, as first option “Boot from Hard Drive”. This surely is counter-intuitive, this should be second, “Install” should come first?? After all, we have nothing to boot from on our hard drive as yet, and clicking this would simply return us to MS Windows or whatever we currently boot to. Those of us who know how long it can take for Windows to boot far enough to turn it off again will know how maddening this can be… Sceptical new users might decide to do something else at this point, and may not return…

There is a reason for this (though a different solution might be possible). The “boot from disk” entry is also the one which starts when you forget choosing something else (timeout). This means that when after the first installation the system reboots, it boots from the fresh installed system (as intended) and not from the install CD still left in the driver if the person installing went off for dinner because of the loading of software takes some time.

3

I am sure you are right Henk, but there must be a way around this so that the very first screen is as foolproof as possible, even having the boot from HDD in second place on the list but still carrying a timeout default would be a step forward?

4

HCW is correct. If you walk away, when the system does its first reboot, it will boot from the hard drive as intended. It’s a good thing.:wink:

You can select what packages you want and don’t want before it installs them. It takes a little time, but I think it is worth it to have that choice. Since you have already installed, you can go back in and remove some of that stuff, but it is not as easy to deal with dependency issues as it would have been durring the install.

I have never ran any of the VM stuff, so I can’t help you there. Never had any need for it, but I really should try it out, just for the experience.

5

TY Wilson, I have now put that particular install to one side for the moment… Onward and upward! Watch this space!

6

I later realised that this was something to do with my Vbox implementation (I have the same probs, believe it or not with Win98 in vBox, which should of course be blazing fast
Win9x on VirtualBox has always been slower and with limited video driver support than it should be due to lack of interest and justification, and therefore lack of development effort. Qemu is the recommended emulator for Win9x. Don’t use the accelerator Kqemu as it will degrade the performance of Win9x.

7

No! Boot from Hard Disk is the MS behaviour and well thought out. Most machines have an OS on them already, and CD/DVD’s get left in drives, a normal boot is the default, and also avoids issues if the BIOS is reached to restart the computer.

When you are installing, many have to set language (& keyboard), and perhaps screen size, booting into the installer unattended is liable to waste these ppl’s time.

[li]The rest of my experiences are, I am afraid terribly negative due to the whole thing being hooooooorrrrrrrrrriiiiibbbbbbllllllllyyyyyyy ssssslllloooooowwwwww. I later realised that this was something to do with my Vbox implementation (I have the same probs, believe it or not with Win98 in vBox, which should of course be blazing fast, but is unusable, XP however works fine, my bad I suppose)
[/li]

No you need to read some Docs & do some research.

Watching boring stuff flicker past, I noticed that a lot of it was installing cruft guff and rubbish for which I have no need or desire. This is Microsoft-style ‘chuck the kitchen sink at it’ tactics, and is one of the reasons I stopped using MS, having loads of stuff on my machine for which I have no need. A couple of examples:
Open Office Suite. I am sure that it is a wonderful suite but I don’t want it. Why is it installed without my consent?

The installer gives you a choice. To get what you want, simply download the Net Install CD, and select text for your graphics options, and choose ‘minimal system’. Then later you can add a partern to add desktop, or whatever, after you turn off ‘install recommended not just required’.

What is done suits the vast majority of ppl. A CD spin for Server/Virtualised installs would be nice, but needs some work.

To be continued… You have been warned!

You’re wasting your time, I have actually installed turning off the things you complain about, it takes me 20 mins from start to finish. There’s also an autoyast, installer possibility.

I could Rant about ppl who don’t Read information but I won’t waste my time, as they won’t read it.

8

On 3: You must have clicked around. Watched the entire slideshow this afternoon, there’s more images than just 2.

In general: if you had put half of the energy you put in this piece of writing, in reading Pre-Install notes, you wouldn’t have had a lot of the trouble you’re meeting.

9

Nice reply Knurpht, WP :slight_smile:
(it was only a sandbox Vbox install)