Agama installation experience

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OK, the continuing saga . . . continues. Just as a general statement I have to say that I still am not enamored with the new Agama installer, from the viewpoint of a multi-booter . . . the default behavior of it is for “use whole drive” and it shows “destructive actions” waiting to happen w/o precise options for adding partitions clearly shown, as per with GParted.

In the old days there was “install alongside” which could be used for beginners, or there was a clear option for “advanced” or “custom” . . . which would then open the GParted data, and a precise disk or unallocated space could be selected and formatted and labeled . . . .

When I did my first install or attempt the Agama installer then would not provide a precise selection of space in GParted, so I opted to go with the 15.6 installer . . . etc. Today, booted up the new installer . . . sort of clicked into the “Storage” area and it’s all very obtuse, having to click on the three dots to try different options . . . and still, the installer seems to want to make the selection??? Then, when I wanted to opt out and “quit the installer” . . . no way to do that??? Had to shut down the machine via the power button.

So, again, in the interest of actual computer science, still wanting to preserve the existing Leap 16 install, even though the longer I was using it yesterday the more ■■■■■ it became. To replicate what I have now, in the other drive, and do it safely to preserve my other installs, the gambit will be using old 15.6 installer, install 15.6 . . . edit to 16 and then add the Wayland DE option . . . and or, add whatever other packages deemed needed to test and compare . . . . Rather than chancing that the Agama installer set up doesn’t understand my intentions and destructively removes other partitions, etc. It’s sort of set up to make the decisions and be visually clean, but not providing precise customized set up for the “advanced” install . . . .

I’ll post back when I have the new 15.6/16 install completed . . . that is all.

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OK . . . seemed like the only option to move from 15.6 to 16 was by using the migration tool . . . sort of ended by saying “the dry run is over” . . . but repos show I am now typing this in Leap 16 . . . so new system is installed to now monitor for misbehaviors.

Seems like if the system runs fine, XFCE installed w/X . . . then no reason to install Wayland?

The only significant personal error in the install was I created and mounted the /boot/efi partition, which then wiped out the TW os-prober function . . . leaving the cold boot to go to grub error window . . . because I removed grub2 from the new Leap installation . . . .

Have to boot to the BIOS and then select TW to get to the grub menu provided by TW. Ran the mkconfig command in TW, but it didn’t clear the grub error window stemming from the new Leap 16 install . . . jumping from fry pan to fire . . . as usual.

Anyway, new system now under heavy testing. One thing I notice is that trying to expand windows to a larger size, requires mousing back and forth over the edge numerous times to get the drag window function going . . . that is the same issue happening in the old Leap system . . . . We will see what shows up . . . one thing now the migration has occurred via the “supported methods” . . . might make a difference to function or . . . ???

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OK, following along on this installer conversation . . . it seemed like, even though the previous installer provided more of a GParted overview of disks available, it didn’t show “unallocated space” to select to edit . . . . And also, did not appear to have a check box for “install bootloader” . . . . Instead it installed the bootloader and then there was a fair amount of fiddling to get it uninstalled and switch grub handling back too TW . . . .

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It does, in one of the drop downs… You can wipe, create, select disks etc… Not as intuitive perhaps, but useable?

Did you read any of the guides? https://agama-project.github.io/docs/category/guides--howtos specifically https://agama-project.github.io/docs/user/guides/storage

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“Badges??? Badges?? We don’t have time to read the st**king guides.” I think you have put it well, “not as intuitive, perhaps” . . . actions are hidden behind three dot drop downs, and don’t seem to be clearly defined as to what will happen or ways to undo it.

And, whether or not disks can be added or reformatted . . . very big over-sight is the no button to punch out of the installer. At very least the old style installer I just used had an abort button on just about every page of it . . . at any point in the install I could have stopped it . . . . That was either not there, not obvious, or very least “not intuitive” in its capacity . . . . ???

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Hmmm. Not trying to hijack the tread, I’m 'old. 60 within a week. I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad workstation(laptop with Nvidia discret GPU)) and a Thinkpad Universial USB-C docking station (40YA)… All kind of problems when docked. Only 1 monitior worked… Was trying Thumbleweed(I miss you Yast), Ubuntbu and the same result.
loginctl show-session:

Docked=no
LidClosed=no

After a week, The solution was here in the forum. Nomodeset when you install Leap16. If you dont delete in grub after… Stupid me.

Docked=yes
LidClosed=yes

I’m using Qemu/kvm instead of VirtualBox.
Anyone that… I can manage and use use the installler(partions). That and some other things in Leap16 have been 3 steps back. How many of you users participate in the survy of Leap16. I think that it was quite clear… Wrong way forwards. O yes. Using Leap16 and are ok with it after a lot of work.Greetings from Sweden.

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Dunno, if folks don’t wish to read up on what they are installing, not a lot one can do.

So we get folks that complain because we don’t have documentation, create guides etc and folks don’t want to read? Seems like a no win situation…

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I would concur that getting 16 going is “a lot of work” . . . and now using it in the new install to monitor problems with glitchy mouse behavior, as per the previous thread.

OK, indeed, hard to “win” in this crazy world . . . I’m not new to linux, nor new to running installations . . . I am providing feedback on my recent experience, with both installer and in running Leap 16 on a relatively new machine. That experience can be accepted or . . . rejected.

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I like the installer, short and sweet, I have the iso image tagged with an installer password, plug in, boot the USB device, then connect to the install system over a remote browser, setup the users, disk etc and done…

My setups are simple 4GB for EFI and the rest for / and done, swap if needed is via zram. Now for Software RAID, that is lacking, but easy to over come from that evil thing called the command line…

In saying that it can all be done via Profiles, so something I need to read up and test with at some point. I will probably use my ADS-B system (running Leap 15.6) for that testing at some point, it only needs a base install and few packages installed, some nologin users and custom systemd services.

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OK . . . “short and sweet” . . . generally that is fine . . . in my case the “complication” is the multiple installs already on the drive . . . . It seems like the installer is set up for most users who will be installing into the whole drive . . . but, not so “intuitive” for the multi-booter.

If the only thing I had going in my life was the care and feeding of openSUSE systems, then sure, lots of time for reading instruction guides . . . . Life is more complicated than that for me right now, generally it isn’t “rocket science” to get a system installed to a machine, or shouldn’t be . . . .

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I have a couple of dual boot systems, that wasn’t an issue, it did pop up a warning about the Windows installs as it was going to delete, but found the option to select “do not modify” all was good…

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O no. It took some time before I got Leap16 working. I’m using it as ‘daily driver’ . I will not going back. Some quirks. Some things are better than Leap15.6. Performance on the same HW etc. I will not recommend to any new user that has other then ‘main-line’ needs. I would say tanks to olds(!) in the forum. Regards.
Regards

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O no… 4GB for EFI?

df -h /boot/efi
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p1  511M  6,0M  506M   2% /boot/efi

On a Leap16 whit some Win guest.
Regards

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@jonte1 and when the bootloader changes to grub-bls or systemd-boot…? It’s called future-proofing… Or when users are multibooting and those distributions are using the likes of systemd-boot…

Example: https://forums.opensuse.org/t/help-regarding-low-efi-space/191491

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Yes, and then it would dump you back to the linuxrc main menu where the only real option was to reboot. What a great help.

Restarting the installation was also there as a menu item, but you’d have to enter all kinds of long URLs manually - which in all the time that I worked on YaST2 (since 10/1999) I did not manage to get right even a single time.

I did manage to switch the language to Hungarian (“Magyar”) from that same menu, though; which makes you wish you’d find your way back to the language menu to switch to something - anything - else. So rebooting was the only option.

If you terminate an OS installer that you started from a bootable medium, you can realistically only reboot. And for that you don’t need an “Abort” button; just do it. Until you start executing the actual installation, nothing has been modified on your disks anyway; everything was happening only in the RAM disk. There is no need for a clean shutdown; just switch your computer off and on again.

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Then please don’t.

There is no way to keep track of multiple issues in one thread. Please open a new one.

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Why do we developers even bother to write all that documentation if users can’t be bothered to read it? This is downright disrespectful, even more so if the result is a lot of complaints in the forums.

It was clearly communicated (and there were a lot of forum threads about it) that Leap 16.0 would be a major change, and RTFM was not merely optional this time. Just casually clicking through the installation procedure would in many cases result in frustration.

You just found that out the hard way.

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True. So why not give the user a button which will allow them to do so? Isn’t that the way professional UIs are designed?

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Because that button would always be on the screen, always be a distraction, always add to the overall complexity of the user interface. And users need it only in some 0.01% of all cases.

Excellence in UI design is achieved not when there is nothing more that you can add, but when there is nothing more that you can remove without compromising usability.

And that YaST “Abort” button is one example when we should have fought harder against those who always pressured us to add more stuff; that thing is ridiculously redundant. It serves no purpose. To the contrary: It pretends that it has a purpose when in reality it does nothing that you cannot achieve much simpler such as power-cycling the machine.

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Stefan, many thanks to you and work on Myrlin.

The problem with Leap16 are not to easy swep under a carpet. Tested Thumbleweed and (Hello Yast, been missing you’). This tread is as good as others. Send a signal upwards. Regards