On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 07:11 -0500, Evan Dandrea wrote: > > http://thorwil.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ubuntu_installer_thorwil.pdf
> Thank you very much to take the time to write up this detailed and > visually stunning report. You're welcome, and thanks for the detailed reply! > > A good live system should have: > > - drive icons for easy mounting > > Go to Places -> Computer, double click on any volume. That's what I did. It let me to wish for icons directly on the desktop ;) > > - an option to save preferences to disk (or to make a package for online > > storage) > > This already exists: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent This seems to be about having everything on a USB stick. I thought of a package you can put on any media or load to and from the web. Of course, such ideas are only cheap to describe and always plentiful ;) > > In Computer, the drives are listed with names like 14.0 GB Volume. > > Seeing the size is helpful, but not enough to identify drives that are > > named by the hda/sda convention elsewhere. Mounted disks are > > labelled disk, disk-1 ... . Too generic and no connection with previous > > name. Also counting from zero, which should be left in the coding realm. > > My understanding is that it uses the disk label, when it exists. I > could be wrong, but this is nevertheless outside the scope of the > installer. I wouldn't be surprised if my disk labels aren't set. I had to wonder quite a bit which partition was which. > > The User Switcher applet shouldn't appear with only one user. > > Again, outside the scope of the installer, but you'll need to provide > solid examples of how it decreases usability if you're going to > convince anyone that it needs to go. In the best case it is ignored. In the worst case the users wastes a few minutes on it, trying to figure out what it is good for. I've seen inexperienced users exploring unknown interfaces - it can be a astonishingly slow process. Users of single account machines don't ever need to be confronted with it. > Now, I really like your partitioner mockups and will be looking for a > way to incorporate what ideas I can from them. Though I don't want to > diverge too much from the already agreed upon specifications and my > time is limited, so we'll have to wait and see. Most of it may have to > wait until after the LTS is out. Feel free to contact me if you need adaptions, variations played through in mockups or just the sources of what I have already. Recently, I have been thinking about removing the info text about required partitions. Having 2 categories in the list instead: "Required" and "Optional". The "Required" category containing to fixed entries for root and swap. Interaction for "Optional" partitions/mount-points might become tricky, though. > Modifying ubiquity to replicate this mockup is not a small code change, > and because the difference is minor I'm inclined to deal with this at a > lower priority. I do like the idea of being able to jump back to > individual pages without hitting the back button a lot, though. The page links would go well with having numbered page icons on the bottom of the window, in place of "Step i of n". A page's icon would change appearance and become clickable after the page has been reached once. > > If you want to encourage users to take part in the package usage > > survey, the option shouldn't be hidden behind a scary Advanced. > > I didn't put it there, but I imagine it's there precisely because we > don't think most users should see it. To my knowledge we do not use > the data for much of anything. In that case, it should be considered to remove it. I guess the data of only the curious and "daring" users isn't worth much ;) > > Installer unmounting problem > > Did you let the installer try to unmount the partition by hitting > 'continue'? Was it unsuccessful? I think I did and it was unsuccessful. Has been a while, though. Let me know if there's something else I should do with respect to my report. Thanks for the great response! -- Thorsten Wilms thorwil's design for free software: http://thorwil.wordpress.com/ -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
