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What the Solaris installer really needs ...

Tuesday May 15, 2007

I wish I could roll up my sleeves and get down to writing some real code right away to solve all these problems that I am going to point out, but I just can't. I need to know more and learn heaps before I can get anywhere near that stage, but I believe I'm contributing this way - and hope this helps someone who is actually working on this.

The point is this. Installing Solaris is not pretty. It's not the toughest thing in the world, and from what I hear its got friendlier and easier along the way - but it would be very rare to find a case where someone got it running without a workaround or some hacking into the code, minor though it may be.

The first problem that we as a community need to solve, is to remove the initial roadblock. Noted Indian blogger Amit Varma talks about the Halo Effect, ie about how first impressions affect things and how so on. This applies to OSes too, I'm afraid and no matter how brilliant the actual product is, it needs to work without any hassle out of the box.

I'm sure this will happen along the way, as more hardware gets supported and more issues come to light, and here are a few things that I thought should've been better about my installation :

Critical Things :
* Network (pppoe and all) needs to run out of the box. Without this, you can't even ask for help!
* Grub did not handle my Windows properly, most probably because both were on different disks.
* Startup times need to reduce
* Why is the setup 5 Gb ?

Equally Important :
* Replace pseudo-GUI with pure GUI installer.
* Encapsulate as much system messages, and replace with newbie friendly language, images and slideshows about features etc.
* Sound does not work at most places.

Where we need to eventually get is to the level of Wubi. Wubi is this brilliant ubuntu package which allows you to install Ubuntu when windows is running! I haven't tried it myself, but the screenshots look amazing.

Will this be possible one day?

PS : Looking forward eagerly to Belenix 0.6, good luck to Moinak and gang.
PPS : Solaris beat Ubuntu wrt graphics/resolution though. Mine ran out of the box, while Ubuntu needed configuration.

[5] Comments

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Posted at 10:55PM May 15, 2007 by Abhishek Nagaraj in Sun
Tags: solaris

Comments:

Since I rarely reboot, the boot time isn't as important. However, I'm adamantly against the Windows way of faking faster boot times by simply showing a desktop faster but loading so much stuff in the background you can't do anything for some time afterwards.

The default Solaris install should have non-root GUI shutdown/reboot options easily configurable for new users. Still, these are not installer gripes.

My number one Solaris install grip: Hurry up and install already!

FreeBSD, Debian/Ubuntu, and OS X have set the installer standard IMHO.

Posted by Wes W. on May 15, 2007 at 11:51 PM IST #

Have you already looked at NWAM (Network Auto-Magic and Caiman Solaris installer projects? Network Auto-Magic is a project to simplify and automate network configuration on Solaris and should appear in the forthcoming release of Solaris Express Developer Edition. Caiman should appear in the following release.

Posted by Alta on May 16, 2007 at 12:49 AM IST #

[Wes] The default Solaris install should have non-root GUI shutdown/reboot options easily configurable for new users.

The forthcoming release of Solaris Express Developer Edition will have this little enhancement along with Auto-Magic as mentioned by Alta.

Posted by Giri Mandalika on May 16, 2007 at 01:36 AM IST #

* Network (pppoe and all) needs to run out of the box. Without this, you can't even ask for help! I can't agree more with this statement. Last Fall,I was helping a friend set up Solaris on a laptop and the installer would not ask for the IP address etc at all. I figured out only in hindsight (on some forums) that the installer would not ask me for network info if the network card is unsupported. Did I get the right info on this from the forums? If its correct, A message that the Ethernet card is unsupported would save a lot of time. Instead of giving the options to choose user,core developer editions during the install time, why not have separate images for desktop users/developers?

Posted by Sivakanth Mundru on May 16, 2007 at 08:23 AM IST #

Thanks a lot for the comments. Wes W : totally agree with hating the windows way of booting. totally sucks. Alta : will have a look at those projects. thanks a lot.