Some thoughts on the linux installation process.
Recently I had to install Fedora linux on a new PC and I found the fallowing problems:
- The Fedora LiveUSB Creator doesn’t work. It takes a long time to do something, I don’t know what, when it’s finally finished you cannot boot from your mem stick. I tried a few other “live usb creators” but they didn’t work either so I had to resort to using the good old dd:
$dd if=fedora.iso of=/dev/sdc # /dev/sdc is the mem stick. This worked perfectly - When I finally started the installation and got to the screen where I had to configure my disk partitions the partition manager was just awful. That thing was reordering my partitions every time a created a new one. For example I tried to create the fallowing layout:
sda1 size: 60GB mount point: /
sda2 size:300GB mount point: /home
sda3 size:1.6TB mount point: /data
It reordered them the other way around (/data instead of being the last partition it suddenly became the first). I don’t know on what bases it decided that the wast partition I create should actually be the first one. Never mind after a few minutes of creating and destroying partitions I finally manage to force the partition manager to place them in the right order. - The installation was quick but then I was hit by this bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=750002. How annoying. No matter what I tried the error always occurred. Finally I managed to workaround this problem by not formatting any of the partitions (in the partition manager I just said: /dev/sda2 is my /home but don’t format it).
- I tried to install the nvidia driver using the official RPM fusion repo unfortunately the dependencies for the package were all wrong and it installed a driver for a much newer kernel than the one I got. The next time a restarted the machine the boot process just got to ‘Starting Display Manager’ and froze there. I had to boot in run level 3 and update my kernel in order for the driver to work.
I’ve been using Linux since 5 or 6 years now and and it took me quite a lot of time (3-4 hours) to install a single instance of fedora 17 on a new PC. And fedora is considered one of the easiest to install (certainly easier than gentoo). All of this made me think. Buggy software, user unfriendly and buggy installers and some what hard to install drivers (but that’s more of an nvidia issue) – no wonder Linux is still considered an OS only for developers. I know linux is employed on most of the supercomputers in the world and that linux runs on most servers but I what to see it being used by normal non-tek people. Fro example: why doesn’t the local bookstore use Linux why do they pay for windows? They are using the OS just to run their ‘bookstore software’. There is not need to pay for a windows copy.
Well, I think for starters two thing need to change:
- The package system needs to go away! To be fair this is not a new revelation. Ingo Molnar wrote about it here: https://plus.google.com/109922199462633401279/posts/HgdeFDfRzNe.
- The separate linux distros must collaborate more – a unified linux installer sounds good. Also collaborating on a replacement for the current package systems sounds even better.
Well linux is still a great platform once you endure the pains and labours of first coming in contact with it and using it but it really should be that painful – the problem is not with the hardware, the problem is with the software. So we just need to rewrite that software. 🙂
svetlinmladenov 
I read somewhere that the Live USB creator won’t be fixed as it needs to be rewritten for F18. Probably shouldn’t be in the system.
I’m not surprised with the nvidia problem as the F17 system is now quite old and there have been plenty of new kernels. All the guides say an update is needed before installing them. If you had installed the akmod instead of the kmod it probably would have worked as the akmod creates the kmod for the kernel you are booting. I don’t know why the correct kernel wasn’t a dependencies though.
I would do a full update before doing anything on a newly installed system especially as F17 is 6 months old.
Your comments on non technical users is probably valid but I bet most of them would have more problems installing Windows than most linuxes. Pre-installed systems are Windows main advantage.
I wonder what is there to rewrite about the USB creator – I thing it should be just some GUI and then the backend should be a simple dd (read a chunk from the iso file write the chunk to the mem stick, repeat). The KISS principle should really be applied. There is no need, for example, to reorder any existing files on the flash drive, it should just show a warning message that all the data will be wiped out.
May be I’ve been using debian and centos for far too long but 6 months old is not that old if you ask me. Usually I update once per year.
I completely agree with your argument about pre-installed windows system.
All the bugs I’ve described are pretty minor but the minor bugs are usually the most annoying.