Sugestions for improving the Gentoo installation experience

humilleitor · n00b Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 4

Hello all:

I'm giving a try to Gentoo, and the very first "issue" I've come across is that the Gentoo Handbook seems to be somewhat outdated. I don't know if this is the best place for writing this post, and I don't pretend to know better than anybody else, but when I compare the Gentoo installation instructions with other distros', I've noticed (so far) at least two things calling my attention: 1.- Lack of WPA encryption in the net-config tool, and 2.- Lack of information about ext4 filesystems.

1.- A very usual scenario for installing an OS would be the following one: someone reading the instructions, downloading and burning the .iso image and, as the next step, booting off the newly created CD (or USB) for continuing with the installation.

But of course, once we do this, we've lost connection to the internet and we can't any more read the instructions (unless we've printed them, which not everyone can do, besides having a higher ecological impact). I think that nowadays it's ESSENTIAL to be able to "recover" the internet connection once we boot off the installation CD. But this will only happen "easily" if we're wire-connected, or at least if we have a WEP encrypted wifi connection. However, these days WAP encrypted wireless connections are becoming more and more popular, while wire connections are less common. But, unfortunately, there's no tool for easily connect to a WAP encrypted wifi in the installation CD. So, in my opinion, it would be an important improvement to include some tool in the installation .iso image for connecting to this kind of wireless internet.

2.- Then, when reading in the Handbook about the different filesystems to choose from for formatting our partitions, I see that there's no mention to the ext4. (!) This is perhaps not so important as the previous point, but somehow it shows that the Handbook is outdated. ext4 comes now as the default in many distributions, and Gentoo doesn't even mention it.

So, to whomever it may concern: please consider these two sugestions.

Sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong place. If someone knows better, I'll be happy to be told where should I move this post, or whom should I address in order to my suggestions being considered.

Thanks all.

swathe · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2011 Posts: 39

I do agree the handbook could use a little updating but during install:

humilleitor · n00b Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 4

Thank you Swathe! I know, it's good to read the whole handbook prior to installing, but it's impossible to memorize every step. That's why I think it's so important to make it easier for people to get online once we boot the installation CD.

Hu · Watchman Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 7679

Suggestions for improving the documentation should usually be reported to the documentation team via the Gentoo bugzilla. You are welcome to post here if you want to build consensus or get comments on the best phrasing to be put in, but you will probably not get the attention of the documentation team without a bug report. Similarly, changes to the contents shipped on the CD need to be reported via the Gentoo bugzilla. I think those are handled by the Release Engineering team, but I have never needed to file a bug in that area.

Gentoo can be installed from any functional and recent Linux environment, so if you need to use a WPA2 encrypted wireless connection for installation, you could use some other LiveCD, such as SysRescueCD.

humilleitor · n00b Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 4

Thank you for the information, Hu. However, I'm afraid that, after having visited the Gentoo bugzilla page you link, I give up this endeavor: As a "good citizen" who wants to report a pothole in the road, I'd be happy to spend 20 or 30 minutes of my time informing the "authorities"; but I can't lose three hours reading through the Bug Reporting Guide and filing a bug report. I'm trying to do "the right thing", i.e., suggesting something that I believe would make it easier to install Gentoo and therefore would promote this distro. Something that, in the end, woud turn out to be good for everyone in this nice project. Personally I don't _need_ WPA encryption or ext4 information: I have enough resources to overcome those obstacles. I just think it would be very good to include those features. But if I have to spend more than half an hour for benefitting the community, then "no, thanks".

Anyhow, I think that leaving this post here may also be somehow useful, because -as you say- it can help to build consensus. It would be good, I reckon, that other people commented here as well. Perhaps, after all, nobody agrees with me and I'm the only one person who thinks that WPA encryption should be included as a basic tool in the minimal CD.

Anyhow, thanks again for the info. I find it quite useful for the next time I think of any suggestion.

Deathwing00 · Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2011 8:41 pm Post subject:

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Gentoo Chat.

humilleitor · n00b Joined: 17 Jul 2011 Posts: 4

Thank you, Wing of Death. That's a great step to improving things. It would be dangerous to keep this post in Installing Gentoo: it could polute some other people's minds.

This reminds me of a comment I posted in the Aptosid forum, some time ago: I mentioned that I found Grub2 quite hard to understand and suggested to keep Grub-legacy as a bootloader option in the installer CD. They yelled at me!
Or when I suggested, to the JetDroid people, to consider that making phonecalls, and not just using games, should be a priority in an OS geared to a phone. My thread was deleted for "demotivating the programmers".

Funny how susceptible to suggestions or constructive critics some people in these OS forums are...

Good luck, folks! Still, I've installed Gentoo...

Deathwing00 · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:51 am Post subject:

Contrary to what you might think, this is the place for suggestions. Here your post will have more visibility. The 'Installing Gentoo' forum is intended to solve problems of people when they perform an installation.

disi · Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 9:37 am Post subject:

I cannot see anything outdated...

dol-sen · Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 3:13 pm Post subject:

humilleitor The docs team are horribly understaffed. That and Gentoo installation is a continuously evolving process, so the docs can become a little behind. That said you will probably still find that gentoo's installation docs are some of the best around.

The best way to help in this case is to find and put together some information on ext4 as a plain text file. Try to word it in a way that is short, clear, quickly outlines its advantages/disadvantages over ext3..., include a link to detailed docs and attach it to a bug in bugzilla.
You don't need to read 3hrs of instructions if you can use some common sense. Since you've successfully installed gentoo, it should not be that difficult. The bug wranglers are good at their job and will fix any small errors in your reporting process selections. Having that information, it will be a lot easier for them to update the install docs.

And welcome to gentoo

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Ant P. · Veteran Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 1992 Location: UK