John on S8

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 07:25:31PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:

> I wonder if we could use the other-installed-operating-system facilities
> in d-i to decide whether to ask this question. While it's a sane default
> for the situation where Ubuntu's the only installed OS, it's an insane
> default when you're dual-booting to Windows, and pretty arguable when
> you're dual-booting to other Linux systems. Since the facilities exist to
> inspect the situation, we aren't constrained to picking one default.

This sounds like a fine idea.  I assume this stuff isn't currently passed on
to the second stage; how much work would it be?

Clearly this is not a high-priority item for Warty, given that we still
have bugs, but if it's easy, it might be a nice post-preview feature if we
have time.

> We ask this question for exactly the same reason that we configure
> networking during installation rather than leaving it to the user to set
> it up with the GNOME tools after installation: it allows us to make a
> best effort to download security updates at install time rather than
> potentially installing something insecure out of the box and hoping that
> the user will update later.

This is an issue to consider in itself.  The current approach gives the user
no choice about using the network; once we do a security update for, say,
the kernel, or XFree86, all installations from Internet-connected systems
would need to download those packages, even if they're on a modem.  This
seems like a potentially serious usability issue for many users.

This raises the old question of whether or not to make point releases.  The
nice thing about point releases is that we'd release new CD images, and
narrow the window where users would end up in this situation.  However, I
think the only way to close it entirely would be to ask an additional
question in base-config about whether it is OK to download packages as part
of the install.

-- 
 - mdz