Re: [Sheflug] LINUX on a P75, 16 Mb ram, 814 Mb HD, No CDROM,

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>     Al> Most distros give you that, but it's much easier for the
>     Al> installer to set things up for you. Having a special button to
>     Al> do the job is usually much more reassuring....
> 
> hudson received SIGABRT at 0x8777cef3 (core dumped)
> ASSERT failed:
> hudson.c, 93:  ASSERT (distro.convenience != distro.reassurance);
> Please report this bug to sheflug [at] vuw.ac.nz.

Just as an aside, anyone using asserts in their code ought to be shot.
They're horrific.

> # The point is, newbies see the button, think "somebody planned for
> # "this," and are reassured.  I see the button and think "oh fsck, I
> # probably won't be able to fix it without removing the package and
> # installing in /opt/local."  Voice of experience....  ;-)

Fix what? Every installer I've used has pretty much worked completely or
not at all, fairly rare that it's partially working. And, I'm afraid I
believe it's the software's job to do mundane tasks, such as setting up
PPP links. Sure, some people want complete control, and their welcome to
it. Personally, I like to let the computer take the strain while I spend
my time on more worthwhile tasks ;)

> # Fact is, I've seen far more bugs in installers before you get to the
> # stage where a shell is available, often before you've even set up
> # access to the distro archive, than after.  Shell access ought to be
> # the first thing an installer sets up.

I'm not arguing with that, just the fact that the more flexible the
installer is to all users, the better it is. Flexibility for powerfreaks
begins and ends with setting up a shell, for normal people it means
putting more features in easy-to-reach places ;)

Cheers,

Alex.


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