7:34 a.m.
Hi
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/BurningDiscs
This would be a very important document for non technical users
attempting to start using Fedora. More content and editorial reviews
would be helpful from the lurkers in this list.
Rahul
4:14 p.m.
I'm thinking that any Windows users thinking of installing Fedora are more
adept at burning ISO's that you give them credit for. That said, while I
wouldn't suggest any material changes to what you've posted for Windows,
what about novice Linux users, who might be working from a Linux distro,
possibly even a live CD? I.e., how about instructions for how to burn ISO's
in Linux, especially for situations where the CDROM is not automounted, and
users may not have menu access to a burner utility. I suppose I qualify as
a semi-literate Linux user, and frankly I was taken by surprise that FC5 no
longer automounts removable media. The release notes say something about
"gnome-mount" but it is Greek to me (as I use TWM or XFCE, not Gnome).
Fortunately, I speak Geek, and quickly scoped out what FC5 was showing in
/dev, and mounted the cdrom from the command line, and proceeded to burn
iso's with cdrecord. If we are going to cater to CLI-challenged Windows
users, we probably should do the same for CLI-challenged Linux users, and
step them through the process of burning ISO's from the command line, if
need be.
Otherwise, the document is very well written for its intended audience. I'm
just suggesting broadening the "non-technical" audience to include Linux
users who might fall into that category.
Basil Copeland
On 4/1/06, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
Hi
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/BurningDiscs
This would be a very important document for non technical users
attempting to start using Fedora. More content and editorial reviews
would be helpful from the lurkers in this list.
Rahul
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4:24 p.m.
On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 16:14 -0600, Basil Copeland wrote:
I'm thinking that any Windows users thinking of installing Fedora
are
more adept at burning ISO's that you give them credit for.
Considering the flood of questions every release, I dont think so.
Providing good detailed documentation is not a question of credit but
guidance.
That said, while I wouldn't suggest any material changes to
what
you've posted for Windows, what about novice Linux users, who might be
working from a Linux distro, possibly even a live CD? I.e., how about
instructions for how to burn ISO's in Linux, especially for situations
where the CDROM is not automounted, and users may not have menu access
to a burner utility
Feel free to write such documentation and provide us. We want more
people to work on specific task based documents along with longer length
guides.
. I suppose I qualify as a semi-literate Linux user, and frankly I
was taken by surprise that FC5 no longer automounts removable media.
It does for me. What has changed is fixed media mounting. That is
documented in the package notes section in
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/PackageNotes
Rahul
6:53 a.m.
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> I'm thinking that any Windows users thinking of installing
Fedora are
> more adept at burning ISO's that you give them credit for.
Considering the flood of questions every release, I dont think so.
Providing good detailed documentation is not a question of credit but
guidance.
I would have thought that one could say everything about burnings ISOs
in a few sentences;
it hardly seems to me to warrant a separate document.
My view would be that a document on how _not_ to burn ISOs,
ie how to install Fedora without using CDs (or DVDs)
would be much more useful.
I know there is a section in the Installation Guide
on Alternative Installation Methods,
but it strikes me as rather esoteric -
eg I would prefer to read the actual commands one has to give
if using PXEboot, for example.
I've had a surprising amount of trouble with the FC-5 CDs -
quite possibly due to my CD-burning hardware -
and this has led me to wonder if too much emphasis
is not put on CDs as installation medium.
If you have only one machine, is it really worth burning a CD?
Many people have huge disks nowadays,
so if you have to download the ISOs,
isn't it just as simple (and more reliable, in my case at least)
to install from hard disk?
And if you have lots of machines,
isn't a USB drive as easy to use today as CDs?
Just a few, slightly OT, thoughts.
PS I'm very happy with FC-5, thanks -
it does seem to me that each FC distribution is slightly better,
although I would worry that they are also getting more complicated.
I'm also very impressed with the effort being put into documentation.
--
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10:43 a.m.
On Sun, 2006-04-02 at 12:53 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>> I'm thinking that any Windows users thinking of installing Fedora are
>> more adept at burning ISO's that you give them credit for.
>
> Considering the flood of questions every release, I dont think so.
> Providing good detailed documentation is not a question of credit but
> guidance.
I would have thought that one could say everything about burnings ISOs
in a few sentences;
it hardly seems to me to warrant a separate document.
My view would be that a document on how _not_ to burn ISOs,
ie how to install Fedora without using CDs (or DVDs)
would be much more useful.
Bear in mind that you need to boot the machine before you can select an
installation source (or "method" as Anaconda calls them). Virtual
machines can use image files as boot devices, but the supported boot
options for a physical machine are PXE, disc, and bootable USB device.
I know there is a section in the Installation Guide
on Alternative Installation Methods,
but it strikes me as rather esoteric -
eg I would prefer to read the actual commands one has to give
if using PXEboot, for example.
The IG covers all of the options and combinations, which makes it hard
to present a linear set of instructions, although somebody is looking at
revising these parts of the IG to make it simpler.
Plenty of people clearly do want a simple set of steps, and various
popular third-party sites offer installation tutorials. I'd be happy to
accept help on doing something within Fedora to address this need.
I've had a surprising amount of trouble with the FC-5 CDs -
quite possibly due to my CD-burning hardware -
and this has led me to wonder if too much emphasis
is not put on CDs as installation medium.
If you have only one machine, is it really worth burning a CD?
Many people have huge disks nowadays,
so if you have to download the ISOs,
isn't it just as simple (and more reliable, in my case at least)
to install from hard disk?
And if you have lots of machines,
isn't a USB drive as easy to use today as CDs?
I'd personally recommend that people who have multiple machines and a
bit of know-how setup a local mirror, and boot from PXE or a boot-only
CD. We have a tutorial for mirrors, and the IG has an admonition that
gently prods people toward it:
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/mirror/
As you say, drives are now so big that you can easily store all of
Fedora Core on a regular machine and use it as an installation and yum
source. Indeed, every machine on your network if you like.
USB boot is relatively new, and isn't yet as standard and reliable as CD
drives, which are on pretty much every machine made in the last
half-decade (apart from ultraportables).
--
Stuart Ellis
stuart(a)elsn.org
Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
GPG key ID: 7098ABEA
GPG key fingerprint: 68B0 E291 FB19 C845 E60E 9569 292E E365 7098 ABEA
9:33 a.m.
On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 19:04 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/BurningDiscs
This would be a very important document for non technical users
attempting to start using Fedora. More content and editorial reviews
would be helpful from the lurkers in this list.
I think we'd do better to encourage them not to use the ISO images at
all; instead to do network installation where possible. You get to skip
the whole 'optical media are unreliable as hell and you need to do the
media check and still expect random failures' bit that way.
--
dwmw2
10:56 a.m.
On Sun, 2006-04-02 at 15:33 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 19:04 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/BurningDiscs
>
> This would be a very important document for non technical users
> attempting to start using Fedora. More content and editorial reviews
> would be helpful from the lurkers in this list.
I think we'd do better to encourage them not to use the ISO images at
all; instead to do network installation where possible. You get to skip
the whole 'optical media are unreliable as hell and you need to do the
media check and still expect random failures' bit that way.
There definitely seems to be a lot of posts about this (lots of cheap
and nasty blanks ?), and the Media Check seems to confuse as much as it
helps.
I think that boot disc + network installation depends on having a good
connection, though. Although many people in the UK have something
labelled as "broadband", the standard plans that I've seen only have a
2Gb a month download limit before additional charges kick in, or less
than 1Mbit bandwidth. Which is OK for updates, but make network installs
less comfortable. I don't know enough about the situation in other
countries to sensible comment there.
--
Stuart Ellis
stuart(a)elsn.org
Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
GPG key ID: 7098ABEA
GPG key fingerprint: 68B0 E291 FB19 C845 E60E 9569 292E E365 7098 ABEA
7:50 a.m.
On Sun, Apr 02, 2006 at 04:56:00PM +0100, Stuart Ellis wrote:
On Sun, 2006-04-02 at 15:33 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 19:04 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/BurningDiscs
> >
> > This would be a very important document for non technical users
> > attempting to start using Fedora. More content and editorial reviews
> > would be helpful from the lurkers in this list.
>
Sorry to chime in late on this thread -- I think this is a very important
document and I'd like to link it up with the Draft System Planning Guide;
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/SystemPlanningGuide
As somehow who supports Linux professionally, I can not tell you how many people I
have had to talk to about the proper way to burn an image. This is something
completely non-obvious to most users and a massive cause of frustration -- even
though we'd like to think it's trivial.
Sam
> I think we'd do better to encourage them not to use the ISO
images at
> all; instead to do network installation where possible. You get to skip
> the whole 'optical media are unreliable as hell and you need to do the
> media check and still expect random failures' bit that way.
There definitely seems to be a lot of posts about this (lots of cheap
and nasty blanks ?), and the Media Check seems to confuse as much as it
helps.
I think that boot disc + network installation depends on having a good
connection, though. Although many people in the UK have something
labelled as "broadband", the standard plans that I've seen only have a
2Gb a month download limit before additional charges kick in, or less
than 1Mbit bandwidth. Which is OK for updates, but make network installs
less comfortable. I don't know enough about the situation in other
countries to sensible comment there.
--
Stuart Ellis
stuart(a)elsn.org
Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
GPG key ID: 7098ABEA
GPG key fingerprint: 68B0 E291 FB19 C845 E60E 9569 292E E365 7098 ABEA
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7 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
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Basil Copeland -
David Woodhouse -
Rahul Sundaram -
Sam Folk-Williams -
Stuart Ellis -
Timothy Murphy