A choice?

[Jeff Vian]

Mark A. Hoover wrote:

> > From: Ben Steeves <bcs at metacon.ca>
> >
> > I would argue that both your examples (Lilo and an fdisk button) fall
> > into the category of being needlessly redundant.  An expert -- the
> > only kind of person who would appreciate the choice -- can choose for
> > themselves if they want to use lilo (admittedly, only after the
> > install) or fdisk (what difference does a button that switches to a
> > console or a key-press sequence make, really?)
>
> So put them on the custom install screen.  Only the experts are likely
> to choose that choice anyway.  As for needlessly redundant, how many 
> different news and mail readers come on the Fedora disks?  How many 
> audio players?  Why do we need both KDE and Gnome?  They're both 
> windowing environments.
>
> As for fdisk, nowhere in the install notes does it say this can be 
> done.  Granted, anybody who realizes that the installer sits on top of 
> what is basically a rescuse disk may have thought about the 
> possibility of fdisk being there.  And admittedly, it's a whole lot 
> easier if the installer installs lilo.  Not only does that mean 
> there's an RPM for it and one that gets updated, but you don't have to 
> go through the trouble of ripping out Grub and making sure lilo 
> replaces it properly.

I agree with your comments here.

I *HATE* DiskDruid and its habit of reordering partitions as it wants, 
instead of using the sequence I create them.  It P***ed me off the first 
time I tried and it refused to allow me to specify the order of my 
partitions on the drive.

Until this discussion began I had no clue that a console could be 
accessed during install by using ctr-alt-F2.  I have yet to see that 
anywhere in the documentation for any distro.

Although I agree that only the expert is likely to want to use fdisk, I 
do feel it should be an easy to select choice. And if hidden (as it now 
is,) how to use it should be readily available in the documentation.

Making the choice of what to allow/prevent the normal user to see/use is 
reminiscent of the inflexible paths we are subject to when using other 
OSes, and is contary to the spirit of OSS and the flexibility we have 
available to choose our own path.  Defaults that meet the standard users 
need should NOT remove the ability of the power user/expert to choose a 
different configuration.  It also should not make it signifigantly 
harder to make those choices.

Just my $.02

Jeff

I do not use LILO because I like the ease of GRUB.  However, that too 
has its place and should be easy to install/use when the system is being 
set up.  Instead we have the current requirement to install grub (no 
other choice) then replace it with lilo after the fact.