Improving user install experience

Improving the user installation experience Just a suggestion....

I came across a machine with a major distro like SuSE. It had been installed but for some reason half way through the install the drives got swapped around. Come reboot time, it doesn't work because boot-grub-menu.lst andetc-fstab contains hard coded information about boot drive. The newbie user has no idea what just happend. Booting into safe mode is not an option. So I went in there with DSL and fixed it. Therein lies my suggestion....

Big distros like SuSE and RHAT should carry with them distros like DSL for repair. Select from livecd boot menu and thats all it requires. It costs nothing to do this because there are no licensing or procurement issues and its an enormous boon for those that strive to create such specialised distros. It costs nothing to have these mini-distros installed to hard drive as an option either through the installers. Of course under corporate peer pressure executives can become evasive to these suggestions and be forced into a position to claim that their Distro is in no way reliant on these little distros, but if you ever end up in that position, you should try think of putting the user first and alao the GPL first ahead of corporate pride. Sharing is all about putting away corporate and other forms of pride, and through GPL sharing everything you have. If that means sharing a little limelight as well, then so be it.

One distro maker can't incorporate every single feature, and so the opportunities to grow are for those that learn to incorporate other distros into their own distributions as a service to plug all the holes left by lack of features.