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#1 Re: Devuan » A philosophical diatribe: How to avoid having users - and how not to » 2018-12-11 21:01:54

ChuangTzu wrote:

Know your niche/audience and cater to them. Devuan/Debian is not the same audience as *buntu/Mageia etc...

The expectation should remain to research and learn, ask questions, get guidance etc...  this will create and encourage empowered users, not simple automatons clicking yes, yes, yes, all the way through an installer.   Also, keep in mind the more something does, the more intrinsic risk that it will screw up.

There is no reason that Devuan can't or shouldn't have an audience appeal that also caters to the *buntu | Mageia | Mint type of user - ie those that just want something that is simple to install and works well out of the box.

The risk of increased installation complexity required to solve ESR's challenge is why I suggest using a webpage as a pre-installation helper to select the correct installer type.  It also means we don't further complicate an already complex to build and complex to use set of installation images.  A web based tool as I've proposed is easier to develop, and extend, and if we collect installation reports with accurate descriptions, we can even look use them to inform more tailored installation options for specific hardware along with better documentation of quirks.

#2 Re: Devuan » A philosophical diatribe: How to avoid having users - and how not to » 2018-12-10 21:51:12

To be honest, I largely agree with ESR with respect to his defining the problems that make Devuan a frustrating installer experience...

I think he's a bit too idealistic in thinking it's possible to have one installer that covers every type of installation situation, However we could certainly make selecting the installer a much smoother process simply by setting up an installation helper web page where a user can answer a couple of simple questions to select the right installer for their particular scenario:

1) What hardware are you trying to install on?
    - identifying the target hardware first gives the first big clues to narrow down the options.
    - start from class of hardware (server, desktop, laptop, all-in-one, tablet, small systems (raspberry pi, beaglebone black, intel nuc etc)
    and then get into specifics that will identify thing like architecture.. might be good to have a fuzzy search for this.

2) Identify the intended use case (Desktop, server, router, minimal etc) - this list should be ordered based on most likely use case for a the hardware selection.

3) Would you like to see how it runs before committing to an installation:
- only presented where live installer options are a reasonable option ie; desktop or office productivity use cases

4) Installation type
- this question may be pre-determined by previous questions
- where there is a selection ie non-live desktop/server ie - installs on pc/server hardware then we need to explain the pro's or con's of the installater options most likely net-install vs's full DVD/BD images.

All the images must include all the available firmware likely required to complete the install.

This could be extended to include questions like Language, and installation task selection (informed by the above), root and user accounts setup and installation of ssh public keys - all of which can be provided as a preseed to minimize the install time questions.

With respect to old kernels... well we need to perhaps provide better advice on how to use the unstable/testing installers to install a stable system with backported kernels.

This isn't an intractable problem, but it will take time and, whilst I'd love to help with doing this I also need to earn a living.  I'd be glad to consider various funding options to that end that would allow me or others to be able to dedicate more time to solving these problems.

#3 Re: Hardware & System Configuration » Ryzen idle lockup » 2018-10-15 14:36:25

@ghaverla, the obvious thing to do is update the bios to the latest version and let us know if the issue persists.

#4 Re: Devuan » We're migrating our distributed network to Devuan » 2018-09-04 20:05:40

What server farms in particular?

I'm working towards having a mechanism to produce cloud-init based images for various cloud and vps providers as a part to of our release processes.  Be nice to gather information on the various platforms that it would be good to support.

#5 Re: Forum Feedback » Auto-logout » 2017-09-13 08:16:27

@gdager.. subscribe to git.devuan.org and use the git.devuan.org oauth integration... gitlab has a session expiry of days iirc...

#6 Re: Other Issues » Update problem » 2017-05-07 19:49:57

I guess it depends largely on how you got there.

Are you running jessie, ascii or ceres?

can you find the lines in the backlog relating to installing desktop-base?

#7 Re: Installation » help to install nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver *No devices detected.* » 2017-02-26 10:31:55

`apt search nivida | grep legacy` should give you the likely set of packages you need for that configuration, and more then likely you need to remove all the manual config and let xorg sort it for you..

#8 Re: Devuan » Current state of Devuan regarding systemd » 2017-02-12 03:55:38

Jessie is in a pretty good state, but ascii and ceres need attention and aren't currently recommended for casual or mission critical tasks.  Of course if you're able and willing to help with the neccessary re-packaging work required to bring them up to date, then let me know and I will can help you get to grips with our workflow.

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