User Hostile Download Page

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

On Fri, 2008-02-15 at 06:52 -0700, Charles Curley wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 11:19:50PM +1030, Tim wrote:
> > On Fri, 2008-02-15 at 12:22 +0000, Pedro Freire wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Before burning, and potentially wasting a disc, *I* check the downloaded
> > ISO against the checksum.  After that check, I move onto the next step
> > (burning the disc, or simply using that file on the hard drive).
> 
> Good advice. It would help if the sha1sums were readily available. To
> download the DVD image for F8, I went to http://fedoraproject.org/,
> and clicked on "Get Fedora" in the left hand column. That took me to
> http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora. Now, I may be getting blind in my
> old age, but I see no reference to [check|sha1|md5|etc...]sums on that
> page.
> 
> To get the sha1sums (and the rescue CD image) I grabbed the URL of the
> DVD ISO, edited out the file name of the ISO file, and opened that URL
> (http://limestone.uoregon.edu/ftp/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/i386/iso/)
> in another tab. I was then able to pull in the rest of the kit.
> 
> How about providing direct links to these files on the download page?

That seems like a good idea.  If you feel up to it, it's easy to do your
own fixes to show how you think it should be:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites/ShowUs

> > 
> > Before *you* download another four gigs, do that check, and see if what
> > you've downloaded is fine.  If so, it's burning that you need to
> > concentrate on, and you can use what you've already downloaded, getting
> > it again is just going to be a waste.  If not, then it's downloading
> > issues that you need to resolve.
> > 
> > Some reference material:
> > http://docs.fedoraproject.org/readme-burning-isos/
> 
> Generally a useful page, except:
> 
> * It refers to F7, not F8.
>
> * It refers to Windows tools and procedures. That's fine for folks
>   using Windows. However, news flash: there are other operating
>   systems in the world: Mac OS X, Free BSD, HP-UX, and one you may not
>   have heard of called "Linux".

Short resources on the Documentation team means focusing on the biggest
pain points and largest pool of needy users.  For users of the other
OSes you mention, they either are more likely to know how to burn a CD
from an ISO (Free BSD, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, etc.) or have an OS that
treats them kindly when they double-click on an ISO file (OS X, some
Linux distros.)  The biggest audience that has historically needed help
with burning an ISO to a disk is Microsoft Windows users.

> Looking for fine software
> and/or writing? 

Yes, we are.  Feel free to write up and maintain a section on burning
ISOs for any OS not included in the README already.  Contributing is
easy:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/Join

You can pull down the source for the README here:

http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewcvs/readme-burning-isos/F-8/en_US/?root=docs

... using these instructions:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject/CvsUsage#Anonymous_CVS

An F8 branch was created; perhaps we just need an update to the content
and a posting on the Docs website.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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