What about offering liveusb-creator at the first place instead of ISO?
2014-07-31 11:04 GMT+02:00 Kamil Paral <kpa...@redhat.com>: > It's a well-known fact in our circles that third-party USB conversion > tools (like UNetbootin or Universal USB Installer) can't create Fedora Live > USB correctly. Unfortunately, it is not well known among our users (I see > it very often on test list, IRC, or local fedora.cz website/forums) and > even journalists. This is an article that was published yesterday > showcasing difficulties of Fedora installation process (translated from > Czech by google translate): > > > https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=cs&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zive.cz%2Fclanky%2Fkdyz-mate-stesti-linux-je-vyborny-system%2Fnotebook-a-fedora-20%2Fsc-3-a-174766-ch-93591%2Fdefault.aspx%23articleStart&edit-text= > > The purpose of that article is to highlight the fact that Linux has made a > lot of progress in the last years, but the results are still a bit like a > Russian roulette. Fedora, in this case, is shown as the negative example. > The website itself is not known for high quality articles here in CZ, but > they are quite popular and have a large reader base. They are mainly > Windows-focused, but with the recent advancement of Linux on all fronts > (mainly in gaming), they're clearly willing to provide more Linux coverage > - and they picked Fedora as their second option right after Ubuntu, which > is great. Provided they're able to install it in the first place... > > The result of Live USB boot attempt is often this (from the article): > http://www.zive.cz/uploadedfiles/38598240.png > > I wonder, is there something we can do to improve the situation? > * We have no control over third-party USB conversion tools. > * Even if we file bug reports, they are often ignored (Adam Williamson > said he tried to communicate with UNetbootin, unsuccessfully). > * Third-party USB installers fail for many distributions, like OpenSUSE < > http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Live_USB_stick> or Arch < > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_Flash_Installation_Media#Using_UNetbootin > >. > * Still, they are hugely popular, because Ubuntu and its derivatives > dominate the market and those tools usually work fine for them. > * The users simply don't know that those tools shouldn't be used, and some > others should be used instead. > > I don't known the technical details about USB conversion process, but > maybe we could collectively think of some changes that would improve the > current state at least a bit? > > Some ideas: > 1. First and foremost, we should obviously consider whether we can make > some compose changes that would make the image more compatible with > third-party USB installers. That's very technical, but I hope relevant > people could provide some comments here. > > 2. Second, we could make USB conversion instructions more visible on our > pages. If you look at http://fedoraproject.org/, there's a big Download > Now! button, which gives you the ISO, but you'll never encounter any > suggestions what to do with it. That's only available at > http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora#desktops in the right column > (which is nice and quite visible, I think). Could we provide the same > information on the front page? > > 3. Third, if everything goes wrong and you end up in a dracut shell, could > we at least advise our users what went wrong and what to do with it? > Because the current output is very scary and very hard to decipher by a > general user: > http://www.zive.cz/uploadedfiles/38598240.png > So what if we detected that we failed to find a partition having > "Fedora-Live" in its name (thus most probably an incorrectly created > LiveUSB), and in that case printed out something like this? > > > ******************************************************************************* > * It seems Fedora Live image could not have been accessed. This often > happens * > * when Live USB media is incorrectly created by a third-party USB > installer. * > * Please refer to official documentation on fedoraproject.org for proper > * > * instructions. > * > > ******************************************************************************* > (native speakers will surely make it sound better) > > This would help our users a lot to understand what's wrong and how to fix > it. Also, it would be much easier to google out the problem. If we included > the same text on our LiveUSB instructions page < > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB>, it could > receive a very good position in online search results. > > > So, what do you think? From my experience, the inability to boot USB is > very common and I'd even say it's one of the major problems why new users > walk away from Fedora. Because, understand, they don't even know something > is wrong on their end. That scary dracut error looks like a problem in > Fedora, and therefore often their conclusion is "Fedora is so broken it > can't even boot". If we try to mitigate the problem at least with clear > explanations, we will not only discourage less users, but also decrease the > number of negative reviews by journalists. > -- > test mailing list > test@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe: > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/test -- *František Zatloukal* *E-mail:* zatloukal.franti...@gmail.com *Mobil:* +420 607 480 053 *Web:* frantisek.zatloukalu.eu
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