usability: fedora's killer app? Clean-Install Assistant...

[Gian Paolo Mureddu]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

What about this scenario:

* Start installation process of the new release.
* Upon detection of your existing copy of Fedora, prompt the user to
migrate user information, accounts, etc.
    ° If clean installation is selected offer at least two options:
       - Format current partition layout.
       - Keep personal files and account/system layout (fstab)
information.
     ° Proceed according to options with the disks, in case of
unallocated partitions (as per fstab) and usable partitions found,
prompt the user if he/she would like to start disk druid to
allocate/format/etc those partitions or stick to the migrated fstab
layout and doing the allocation later.
* Select packages, mirrors, etc
* Boot your system, and make first boot inherit system accounts
information. In oder words, if there is something "nonstandard" on
/etc/shadow and /etc/group, and they correlate to the users in /home,
skip the user creation step.

Basically instead of full reformat, what would be done is something
like a 'for in' loop to remove all system files, except for those
needed to perform the migration, i.e /home (in case of a monolithic /,
and if there's a /home entry as a mountpoint in fstab, ignore this),
/etc/shadow, /etc/group, /etc/passwd. Perform the installation, and if
users in /etc/passwd do match the declaration of their home
directories, make First Boot skip user creation.

It would also be helpful to be able to asign root's password as part
of the First Boot service, especially helpful if you sell systems with
Fedora pre-installed, you can kick-start the systems for installation,
and the end user is able to set their own root password as part of the
first boot configuration routine.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE94xMXM+XOp70dwoRAhgaAJ4y+4IxdsF+Rn/bwIvV4sFLJxvxWwCePjNW
fFFXrkt0wudA/LfW7Wy4nCE=
=qhBU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----