I installed and played with Ubuntu 10.10 over the weekend (in a VM), and I have to say that their installer is very smooth indeed. It's starting to make anaconda look distinctly clunky.
Some of the things it does which are IMHO better:
- starts disk formatting / copying / installing in parallel with asking user questions
- downloads updates in parallel too
- uses IP geolocation to guess the user's timezone and keyboard settings (it's been 100% correct for me each time)
- suggests a username and hostname based on the user's real name (Mac OS X's installer also does this -- it's a nice touch)
This is in contrast to anaconda (certainly from the live CD install) which seems to be a usability no-go area.
Thoughts? Can we switch to their installer?
Rich.