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.
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