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Re: Installation Party Summary
On Sun, 27 Oct 1996, Harvey J. Stein wrote:
Harvey, as is so boringly usual, your comments are well thought out and
to the point.
However,
> 1. The Washington Linux Users Group asks people to defrag & repartition
> *before* arriving. Maybe that would help...
I would NOT trust a newbie, no matter his afiliation, to defrag and,
worse, repartition the disk.
> 2. I'd suggest settling on *one* distribution, and bringing as many
> copies as possible on as many media formats as possible. You should
Agreed and a good point.
> 3. Aren't network installs are more trouble than their worth?
> Cracking open multiple machines, plugging in cards, dealing with IRQ
> &/or DMA conflicts, getting enough linux up and running to continue
> with a network install, etc... I'd think it'd take an absolute
> minimum of 10 minutes to get a machine on the net, which gives a rate
> of 6/hr, which means 3 hours of hardware hassles just to get 30
> newbies on the net, let alone the network config hassles. I think
> it'd be *much* more efficient to just skip the server concept and make
> sure there's one copy of linux per machine.
Agreed, assuming that the machines to be instaled _HAVE_ a cdrom.
Otherwise, it's still "crack open the machine, install {cdrom,disk} and
install" - possibly taking MORE time than installing a network card.
I am still in favour of at least ONE network-capable install server.
> 5. I often find that the biggest hassle with installing linux is
> finding out the details of peoples' hardware. So, lets have a form
> for people to fill out before coming. It should ask for *all* the
> details of their system (what cards, what brands, what configurations,
> what monitor (max hsync, max vsync, max dot clock), IRQs, dma usage,
> hard disk (chs, partition table, brand, ...) ...). If they come with
> enough info, it'll make the installations more foolproof, less risky,
> and make installing X easier (and safer).
In a phone call with roji, I suggested preparing a checklist for each
machine to be installed. This idea should be integrated into the
checklist concept.
---MAV (finger for PGP signature block)
My opinions are my own and only my own. Standard disclaimer applies.
Marc A. Volovic (marc@cs.huji.ac.il) Linguists do it cunningly
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