From:	 "Matt Jezorek" <matt@bluelinux.org>
To:	 "Jonathan Corbet" <corbet@lwn.net>
Subject: Re: Common Linux Installer Editorial
Date:	 Thu, 18 Oct 2001 10:11:01 -0400

 To whom it may concern:

     After reading your article and several other complaints thru email and
 lots of people pushing the group to just use Anaconda or another GPL
 installer we would like to formally answer and maybe stop some of the
 questioning of our thinking process.

     We are not trying to take away individuality of the Distribution. The
 installer should be built on three different levels. Two of these are
 completely changeable and customizable to the Distribution using the
 installer. The Three layers will consist of a Functional Layer, a Text
Layer, and a Graphic Layer. The Graphic Layer and Text Layer are totally
customizable should the Distribution want to customize it. This way ALL
istributions can be modified and seem to have there own Installation.

     The reason we feel that a CLI is needed is because of all the
resources used in each Distribution for developing an Installer for their
Product.

Now the installation procedure is very important to the end users. But lets
face it, that is not what people are looking for in a Distribution is a nice
pretty installer. Yes they are looking for an easy one to use but mostly
they are looking for functionality of the actual distribution and can they
hit
 the ground running once the Distro is installed. By pooling resources
 together from the community we can create an easy to use and easy to modify
 installation program. This will allow resources formally used to create
the various installers be used to fix bugs in the current distribution, work
on new features or relax a bit.

     As far as anaconda and other GPL Installer we could use none of
them fit the bill correctly.  Anaconda all though it is under the GPL it was
 written completely for Red Hat. If you look in the code you will find hard
 coded paths that state Red Hat. So yes one could completely erase all
traces of Red Hat hard coded in the code but to do so would mean to hand
edit each
 file. Some say you could do a search and replace. Well if you do you might
 run into licensing problems due to the fact that Red Hat appears in the
 licensing text at the beginning of most files. This goes the same for most
 GPL installers

     Also Anaconda does not have clean enough separation from functionality
 and display. This is what we want to avoid. Also the CLI should think for
 itself for the most part. A lot of users who are installing Linux for the
 first time don't know anything about dependencies. But the Installers all
 Ask. So if a user selects a package and does not select a dependency the
 installer will ask them package FOO depends on package F002 do you want to
 install this package. The common answer is yes. So why ask?

     The CLI group is proposing to create a simple to use, modular
 independent, easy to configure Installation program with 100%
 configurability to the front end. Mostly the CLI will be a Common Backend
 with a sample front end that can be used or not.

     The reason behind this is all installers do the exact same thing. This
 seems like a waste of resources. Every installation program sets root
 password, partitions hard drives, formats partitions, and installs
packages. Why not develop a standard way to address this?



This installer will be built to allow any package manager to be used.  If
the distribution used rpm then in the configuration file they select RPM
this will load the RPM Module or if they use tar then they could select TAR
in configuration and that will load the TAR module.  This is the exact
reason why we are pushing for a modular system.


 Matt Jezorek