Denis-
Its great to hear the guys at Mandrake are willing to listen to the end users.
Here is my first input:
The install program is very slick. However at one point in the install,
after you have partitioned the drive you are shown a slider bar and asked
to pick how much software you want to install. (you choose the amount of
megabytes to install). I find this very confusing. If i pick 800mb what
is being installed? Am I getting all the packages I need??
If you do an expert install you are later given a list of software and you
can pick and choose what packages you want. But if you are not doing the
basic install Mandrake simply installs xxx megabytes of software and the
user has no idea what it is getting.
I find this to be extremely non-user-friendly. Especially since I like to
know what is going to be installed on my box. Perhaps in the next version
you could rework the install so that you are give a list of "prepackaged"
install options such as "light, medium, everything" But then in the next
window you would have the total list of packages and the user can
add/remove items.
Thanks for listening.
Aaron Zuercher
At 08:30 PM 5/25/00 +0200, you wrote:
>Hi, folks!
>
>What follows is probably a single most important letter I ever posted on
>these mailing lists, so please read it very carefully!
>
>[ANNOUNCEMENT]
>
>We (Mandrakesoft) are starting internal discussions about future of
>our distributions NOW. We want you to take part in the process of
>improving our next distro.
>
>- NOW is a time to ask us whatever you want: tell us what you like, tell
>us what you hate, tell us what you dream of!
>- NOW is a time for you to influence the future company decisions - start
>thinking, and if you come up with a briliant idea, post it here.
>
>Starting NOW, I am going to stop sleeping, eating, or doing any other job
>which would interfere with currently most important task: Making sure we
>make the best decisions based on whatever input we can get.
>
>[RULES]
>
>* Basically everything you can think of is open for discussion, except
>question of including non-free software in the core of our distro, which
>is absolute NO-NO.
>
>* Listen to what other people have to say. Try keeping the signal/noise
>ratio as high as possible.
>
>* One topic per e-mail and informative subject line help us a lot. ("125
>Great ideas!!!" is a very bad subject line.)
>
>* Please, try to avoid any kind of flaming on the list for the next 10
>days.
>
>* Finaly, If you have time and skills to pick up ideas from long
>discussion threads and write a good summary, please do it, it will help us
>a lot.
>
>[TOPICS]
>
>Topics we are particularly interested in at this moment include:
>
>1) ergonomics: What should our user interfaces look like in the
>future, what should we improve in our desktop configuration, which things
>need polishing...
>
>2) install: Which features of our current installation
> program (DrakX) do you like, which features are you missing, what is not
> clear enough? The same question goes for post-install configuration
> tools.
>
>3) packages: which packages to add, what to remove from the distro,
> which subset of packages is really nessesary for a minimal install,
> and which packages are "just add-ons"?
>
>4) tools: which new tools (packages) should we develop ourselves, or
> improve in case we are already developing them? Many great
> programs already exist out there, so we really badly need to know
> which important linux tools you still miss, in order to
> concentrate on them in the future.
>
>5) system policy: We want to make our system "logical" by following the
> Linux Standards, and being consistent in the way
> "things" (services, settings) are implemented. Tell us where
> we need to improve.
>
>6) security policy: Closely related to point "6". You know that we care a
> lot about security, don't you? Well, the problem is choosing right
> security settings for various situations.
>
>(If you feel that we have forgotten an important topic, just start a
>discusion on it, the list should not be taken too strictly)
>
>################
>I am going to spend a lot of time in reading "newbie" and "expert" mailing
>lists during next two weeks. Guillaume will do the same on the
>"cooker" list, and other members of the company may pop-up and take
>part in discussion too, for topics they may be particularly interested in
>(and if they get time to do it, our schedule is bursting).
>
>At the end of the discussion cycle (in two weeks), I will try to write a
>resume of what has been decided and share it with you.
>
>yours
> Denis Havlik
>--
>-----------------------------------------------------
>Dr. Denis Havlik <http://www.ap.univie.ac.at/users/havlik>
>Mandrakesoft ||| e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Quality Assurance (@ @) (private: [EMAIL PROTECTED])
>-------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------------------
>
