Dick Davies wrote:
> 
> As others have said, it's non-trivial (pronounced 'a fucking nightmare')
> to get X configured on unknown hardware. 
> Would it be 'user friendly' to ask my gran to edit XF86Config to run sysinst?
> The only benefit anyone has suggested for all this work would get you is a
> scrollbar to select your timezone.
> 
> (fwiw, my vote would be for a two-level heirarchy, so you'd pick 'Europe' or whatever,
> and then your country. job done.)
> 

The sysinst in 2.0BETA and -current is split into a two level hierarchy
(Europe / London for instance).

> 
> The last time I installed RedHat (v9 I think) it took all day.
> I swear the reason redhat is bloated is because the installer is designed in 
> such a way that your options are :
> 
> a) spend all day deselecting RPMs
> b) say 'bollocks, install everything, I'll be in the pub if you need me'
> 
> and then you stagger in at 5pm and find it's asking for disk 2...
> 

To be fair, if you're installing RedHat for something like a server
farm, then you'd use a kickstart script. Admittedly it might take you a
while to initially configure the script on a test machine, but once it's
done it's very straightforward to install a whole load of machines.

For a desktop install of RedHat, my approach is to pick the minimal
install (which last time I tried only required disk one). I then install
the extra bits I need by hand, although I do have fairly minimal
requirements (X, some development tools, rxvt, NEdit and DDD).

Chris