Bugzilla – Bug 156529
installation mode dialog is suboptimal
Last modified: 2007-07-23 13:52:53 UTC
The yast2 dialog for choosing the installation mode (between new installation and update) has a strange layout. It has a groupbox to chose that mode, and then a button "Other..." which open a small dialog with two more choices in a groupbox (namely "Repair Installed system" and "Boot installed system"). This separation is not useful. There is enough space in the whole window to integrate those last two choices directly into it, without the need to add this "Other..." button.
Oh, I want to mention also that this is inconsistent in itself. When I chose between "New installation" and "Update" I still have to click the "next" button at the bottom. What exactly happens when I want to boot an installed system? I click "Other", will get the groupbox with two more radio buttons, chose one, and press "Ok" of that dialog. I would expect that the dialog closes and nothing is selected anymore (which would be strange looking also). Instead by pressing Ok it immediately jumps to another dialog box where I can chose the root partition, without having to press the "next" button at the bottom. What's even worse is that when I cancel that root-partition choser, I fall back into the console, with a text dialog telling me "An error occured during the installation." So, that strange "Other" button plus dialog is not just bad from a usability p.o.v. but also buggy and surprising implemented. That never can be good.
The dialog was result of long usability discussions. Stefan, you joined them (AFAIK) all, can you comment?
Those dialogs were the result of a very long sequence of discussions about improving usability of our installation. There were those who claimed that Windows XP is so much easier to install (which I energetically refute) and that we need to simplify the installation. It had been proposed to skip this step completely and to always only offer a new installation (claiming that the "update" workflow is something for specialists only). So the compromise was to keep the dialog, but to hide the more exotic choices behind that "Other..." button. I actually consider that an improvement: Even though there would be enough screen space to display them in the same dialog, you don't get distracted by the exotic options every time you are in that dialog.
As for the "boot installed system" workflow, I agree that this could be improved some. Jiri, this one is yours, back to you ;-)
This seems to be an enhancement for the next version. We cannot cahnge such dialogs in this phase of product development.
I'll accept this, though it's really very surprising behaviour when it just shows a simple dialog, which when pressing Ok goes away, changes the window behind it completely and goes straight into the chosen installation mode, _without_ any way to cancel without going to the text console (most other things can be retroactively changed by just going Back).
*** Bug 141213 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 96740 [details] Solution proposal (screen 1)
Created attachment 96741 [details] Solution proposal (screen 2)
Thorsten, Andreas: What do you think of this proposed solution for Installation Mode Dialog (comment #8 and comment #9)? Please, keep in mind, that openSUSE 10.2 is still in the same branch as SLE 10 SP1.
I like it much better than the current one, even for SLE10 SP1. I would say: go ahead and implement it.
The proposal is better than the current dialog, but: Why do you hide the "other" items unless "other" is selected? I'd vote for simply greying them out instead of hiding them.
Christian, we want as few items in the dialog as possible. That's why it was hidden 'behind' the [ Other ] button, that's why I'm hidding them again.
New dialog will appear in yast2-installation-2.13.144
Thanks for working on this. [PS: I agree that graying out the "other" items is better (because less surprising) from a GUI design p.o.v. but I know that having very few items was a requirement]
I'd also prefer the dialog with grayed items instead of hidden as Christian proposes in comment #12. From the user perspective it is more obvious what the meanings of all options are than in the situation when part of dialog suddenly appers (or hides). Maybe the requirement was wrong.
It's always about subjective opinions. Normal user will never use it anyway. If there was a possibility to hide even the 'Other Options' selection, I would do so.
On Pegasos PPC for example, one needs to use it on first boot, as there is no bootable kernel installed during installation. So hiding it away from the user makes installation more difficult. A 'greyed out' version would be more useful.
How comes that there is no bootable kernel during installation, isn't that rather a bug?
Slightly off topic...: It's a CHRP compliant PPC machine, so it's treated like an IBM RS6000. It's different and boots differently, but YaST still does not care about it after writing bugreports for almost a year now... Once the installation is finished, 'mkzimage' must be run manually to create a bootable kernel image.
Peter, please, try to create a different bugreport and I'll try to drive it. Well, if there is some way to find it out that the machine needs to run it. I mean: something like 'hwinfo says that', 'hwinfo identifies the machine well (and how)'. You might try to post it also to some opensuse.org mailinglist to get more votes or to get more information. Now it seems to be a bug for me, but not a bug of an Installation layout. Thanks
(In reply to comment #17) > Normal user will never use it anyway. I don't agree on this - or maybe you have a different definition of a "normal user" ;-) I see the following usecases: - most users will (of course) use "install" or "upgrade" - _in case of problems_, users need "boot installed system" (if bootloader is broken) or "system repair" (in case some base packages are broken for whatever reason) IMHO it isn't a good idea to make it more difficult for people that already have a problem and now need one of the "other" options. BTW: Who defined the requirement of hiding the other options? Can he/she please add a statement here with some reasons why it should be this way? BTW2: re-reading my usecases above, I'm thinking about renaming "other" to "error-correction" (german: "Problembehebung", not sure about the english translation). Just an idea ;-)
Frankly, there was no requirement of hiding otherr options. The requirement was "as few items on the screen as possible" and the other one was "don't hide these options behind the 'other' button". Actually I don't think that these options even belong to this dialog that reads "Installation Mode". It is really an "error correction" or "rescue". Try to remember how it was before: there was an "Other..." button that didn't not tell anything more. So don't say that we are making it "more difficult" :) At least the difficulty is the same but it's more logic now (see comments #0 and #1).
I suggest adding the repair function to the boot menu altogether, see also Bug 273104
I agree with comment #24. If users want to repair their system, they are too much attracted by the "rescue system" in the bootmenu. Hence there should be a "repair tools" entry too. That way one could lead them directly to the "other" options, i.e. offer them ony "repair installed system" and "boot installed system". Maybe even "restore bootloader (MBR)".