[manjaro-dev] Fwd: [Manjaro Linux Support] Suggestions to improve the Manjaro Installer and Manjaro

[Philip Müller]

fyi


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Manjaro Linux Support] Suggestions to improve the Manjaro 
Installer and Manjaro
Date: 	Fri, 8 Nov 2013 08:17:36 +0000
From: 	Jesper Larsen <jeela76 at outlook.com>
To: 	support at manjaro.org



From: Jesper Larsen <jeela76 at outlook.com>
Subject: Suggestions to improve the Manjaro Installer and Manjaro

Message Body:
Hi
First I want to say that I really like Manjaro Linux and it is really one of my favourite distros, whether using the Gnome-shell, Cinnamon, Mate or whatever desktop...It is fast and in general very stable.

And I really like the new manjaro installer in manjaro 0.8.8 - the graphical layout is just great :-) even though it is still in beta - it is better than the Debian installer.

But I have some suggestions that I want to share with you - I don't know if it is all technically possible - but anyway here it comes :-)

You might consider to present users with a choice of choosing either a default installation or a custom installation when users start the new graphical installer from the Live-DVD they have chosen whether it is the XFCE, Cinnamon, E17 or whatever desktop. You could just add it as an extra button named "Custom Installation"

If the user click the button custom installation they will have more choices to customize the installation, such as:

- Be able to choose from a list of display managers to use: MDM, GDM, KDM etc..

- Be able to add additional Desktop Environments (DEs) to install in addition to the one in the default installation. These additional DEs will then be downloaded from the repositories during install.

I know from experience that there can be some problems/conflicts where some DEs are not compatible with the Display Manager (DM)
i.e. in a mate and/or cinnamon installation where the gnome-shell cannot be started from the MDM display manager, but where mate and cinnamon can easily be started from GDM - problems arising from having so many different DMs :-).

Therefore I think that in the Custom Installation one should choose the desired Display Manager to use as default from a list before choosing which DEs to install.

After choosing the desired DM,  i.e. GDM or KDM, then a new section should appear, A "Desktop Environment selection" section. In this section the user is presented with a list of all the DEs compatible with the chosen DM. If the user chooses i.e. GDM it could be KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Gnome-shell, Cinnamon, MATE etc..
If the user chooses MDM then some of the DEs mentioned above might not be on the list because it cannot be configured with this DM.
So the DEs present on the list depends on which DM is chosen - the list is generated based on the DM selection in previous section.

There should also be a section where one can add additional repositories i.e. manjaro testing/unstable and AUR repositories to be added to Octopi and Pamac repo list so that the user later in a "Software Selection" section can choose the latest bleeding-edge packages if they want.

After adding additional repositories, there should be a section where additional packages could be chosen, i.e. Multimedia: Audacious, Exaile, Clementine, Internet: additional browsers like chromium, opera, midori etc. The available packages in this "Software Selection" depends on whether additional repos i.e. AUR is added. If AUR is added then Google Earth and other packages not available in the default manjaro repos could also be chosen - because the list of available packages depends on.

Of course not all packages from AUR should be shown on the list - but only selected ones like Google earth.

Maybe it should also be possible to choose additional kernel version to add. If kernel 3.4 or 3.10 is used and the user wants to add the latest kernel to be added in the GRUB2 menu that should also be possible.

These are some of the ideas I would like to share with you to improve and enhance the functionality in the new Manjaro installer.
By splitting it in a Default Installation and a more advanced Custom Installation where more choices can be made it will fit both newbies and advanced linux users

Maybe you should consider making a completely new DM - your own Manjaro Display Manager taking the best from KDM, MDM and GDM to ensure 100% compatibility with all the most popular DEs mentioned above can be installed and started from the same DM without any conflicts ?? :-) - then the trouble of generating different lists of supported DEs (in the suggested Desktop Selection" section based on DM choice could be solved too.

By the way - In the new Manjaro 0.8.8 RC1 Gnome-shell edition there is no Manjaro Logo and distro name - That would be really nice if you could add one...Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu GNOME has their logo and name in their GDM :-)

Best regards

Jesper Larsen

--
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