[Mageia-discuss] Suggestions

[J.A. Magallón]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:22:25 +0200, Wolfgang Bornath <molch.b at googlemail.com> wrote:

> 1. At Mandriva we already had different ISOs for 32- and 64-bit, which
> we should do as well. So this question about the arch during
> installation is obsolete.
> 

One idea about archs...

Nowadays, all boxes are 64bit. Even a low-end netbook I bought recently
(aspireone 532h) has an Atom N450, which is 64 bit, and has 1Gb of
RAM. I think the user should not have to decide which ISO he has
to download. If he knows nothin, would not know the difference
between 32 and 64 bit. And if he is informed, he will always have
the doubt if he should install the 64 or the 32 bit version on
a core2 (do I have more than 3Gb ? will it be slower or faster ?).

I think the 64 bit distro now works prefectly. The only things that
mainstream users always missed on 64 bits are java and flash,
and now you have both (well, flash 'square' is still rc, but...).

I would do a couple things:
- pull a selector in the download site that allows the user to
  select his CPU. Perhaps he doesn't know if it is 32 or 64 bits,
  but sure he knows it is an Intel Core 2 Duo or a Pentium4 or
  an Athlon X3. Send him to the 64 bit version unless it is a
  pentium4 or lower.
- put a check in the 32 bit ISO that shows a BIG SCREEN in case
  that the processor is 64 bit capable that says 'Sorry to have
  wasted your bandwidth, but your box will run better with the
  64 bit version, you have a XXXXX Korethlon X7. Go mageia.org
  and pick the best distro for your computer.'

Guide people to 64 bits...
This is also a good impression for people, 'hey, I run exactly the
same system on my desktop than on my laptop...'. And nobody will
kill you with things like 'I added 4gb more RAM, it was cheap,
but Mageia dont see them!!!'.

> 2. A difference between desktop/laptop/mobile should be on "task"
> level like the meta-task scripts we had at Mandriva. I don't think
> there should be a real special distribution for any purpose. There are
>  special Mandriva editions für netbooks (meego), for machines with
> poor ressources (LXDE Edition), etc. Such special editions used to be
> created by groups inside the community, we can do it likewise.

Even that are needed. In my N450 I run exactly the same soft than
in my desktop. I want firefox, claws, gcc, openoffice, gnome...
and all work perfectly. I used to run the same even on a N270 with
8Gb SSD. Why do you heed a special ISO to let the user install
LXDE ? At most, you could 'recommend' a desktop environment based
on hardware profile, but as I said I was perfectly happy running
a full gnome DE on the N270.
The limit is the size of the DVD media, sadly...
BTW, there are things that can be adapted to make the distro look
much better on low profile machines, for example, forget
compiz and set byt default metacity 'compositing_manager' flag.
It makes your netbook look awesome and is fast, even on i915.
Try it. I never went back to compiz again, I just like window
shadows.

Things like MeeGo are apart, that is a special environment nearer
to Android that to a standard linux install.

> 
> So, my vote goes to the "one Mageia edition" solution with room for
> any other special enhancements to be created by community groups like
> the XFCE group, the LXDE group (MUD), the Meego group, etc. At least
> for the start. If we have the ressources and if there is a demand for
> such special editions we can see to that later after the main
> distribution is rolling.
> 
> BTW: "Mobile Linux" for mobile phones is Android and I don't think
> anyone could beat that on the market. We should not bother with that.

And I dont think no 'standard user' is going to break his Galaxy Tab.

-- 
J.A. Magallon <jamagallon()ono!com>     \               Software is like sex:
                                         \         It's better when it's free