[Lubuntu-comms] installing Lubuntu in less than 100 seconds

Tue Jun 25 16:12:53 UTC 2013

Hi Ali,

But it is much *simpler* than today's installers. My installer is like a
bicycle, and the other installers like aeroplanes with the cockpit full
of fancy options, and some of them eat a lot of memory.

But it is not beautiful yet. If someone dresses it up with a simple
graphical interface, it might be like YannBuntu's Boot-Repair script,
but probably slightly simpler.

I think we need a simple and robust engine. Then there are many people
who like to make nice graphical user interfaces, but rememeber that such
things eat memory. Maybe a good solution might be to run it from a
minimal text based installed system created from the mini iso. It could
be an extremely simple installer (simpler than Windows self-installing
exe files).

But of course, somehow it must be put onto the live CD/DVD/USB drive,
and that might be the hardest step for the newbie, unless there are
prepared media.

I remember the first time I made a boot CD from a Ghost diskette. I
could hardly think it would work. And some years later, all the
complicated steps to make a Bart PE CD and later on USB drive.

Best regards
Nio

On 2013-06-25 17:39, Ali Linx (amjjawad) wrote:
> Hello Nio,
> 
> Thank you for the time and effort you are contributing to our community
> since you joined us until now. I'm really, really, really glad to have
> someone like you among us. We do need more people like you ;)
> 
> If you don't mind, I'd like to share my opinion.
> 
> This is all great and nice (without going deep in technical details) but
> I'm afraid we are missing a very important note.
> 
> Those users are Fresh New Beginners Users that most likely never ever
> heard or seen or used Linux in their entire life. If they have, they
> wouldn't still use Windows XP and will still use it until May, 2014 :)
> 
> So, these approaches may find their place among us as average and above
> average Linux/Lubuntu Users but IMHO, and hope you don't get me wrong,
> this is too much for them. 
> 
> We need to make the migration process as easy as piece cake. 
> Any further technical step, they will be lost :P :D
> 
> Anyway, I promise you that once I will have the time (not sure when? :(
> ) I will give that a test or maybe it is better we find someone who is
> new to Linux and give him/her this. Whatever feedback will come, it will
> help us to know whether they will be happy or not :D
> 
> Please don't take my comment as anything negative. I do love the energy
> you are showing but I'd like also to be on the same page. 
> KISS = Keep It Simple and Short.
> 
> This is the success key in our holy mission :D
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund at gmail.com
> <mailto:nio.wiklund at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi everybody,
> 
>     I think the end of life of Windows XP is a great opportunity for
>     Lubuntu, and I really hope the Lubuntu community will be happy receiving
>     [many] new people.
> 
>     Will they be happy installing Lubuntu in less than 100 seconds?
> 
>     - Installing in a simple and straight-forward way.
>     - Not yet polished, but simple from the ground.
> 
>     I was kind of frustrated, that in order to succeed with low RAM, most if
>     not all degrees of freedom are lost, and yet the [graphical desktop]
>     installer feels quite unstable. Yes, I admit that is is much better than
>     before with zRAM, but anyway, if there are no degrees of freedom you
>     might as well run a simple deterministic shell-script.
> 
>     So I made almost a one-button installer (there are a few yes-no
>     questions, and a simple cli selector to make it easier to find the
>     correct target drive). This installer is run from a 'grub-n-iso-swap'
>     system from
> 
>     https://help.ubuntu.com/community/grub-n-iso
> 
>     I installed a system from a USB 3 pendrive to a USB 3 HDD in less than 1
>     minute and 40 seconds (including answering those questions). Here are
>     the computer specs.
> 
>     http://www.toshiba.se/laptops/satellite-pro/c850/satellite-pro-c850-19w/
> 
>     I hope that it will work well also with old computers, where the
>     standard installers tend to be slow.
> 
>     I created the system on the IDE hard drive of my old AMD Athon XP, and
>     made the tarball from it, so it was ported across time and
>     manufacturer's barriers without any problems.
> 
>     I think this way might be easy enough for Windows XP users.
> 
>     The script does the following main tasks.
> 
>     1. Helps selecting the correct drive with some logic and simple command
>     line tools.
> 
>     2. Unmounts and swaps off.
> 
>     2. Wipes the first megabyte with dd.
> 
>     3. Creates two partitions with fdisk (fully automatic).
> 
>     4. Makes a file system and swap system.
> 
>     5. Expands a tarball of a freshly installed Lubuntu Saucy alpha
>     including updates and third party multimedia (2.1 Gibibytes
>     uncompressed).
> 
>     6. Installs the grub bootloader.
> 
>     I have attached a text file with some output from the text. I timed it
>     with the following command:
> 
>     time sudo ./mktst
> 
>     and it responded with
> 
>     real    1m38.621s
>     user    0m22.692s
>     sys     0m8.576s
> 
>     And finished with a fully working portable Lubuntu installed system.
> 
>     Beat that record if you can :-)
> 
>     Yes, you can, because I'm happy to share the script, and the computer is
>     fairly new, but not really fancy, so with a faster computer and an SSD
>     target (or SSD source and target) it will be easy to reduce the time.
> 
>     The attached script has two lines commented away (just for the test),
>     but if you want to use it in serious situations, you should reactivate
>     them, because they help selecting the correct target drive.
> 
>      #####lshw -class disk >> "$hlptxt"
> 
>      ##### xterm -geometry 120x40 -title "less $hlptxt" -e less "$hlptxt" &
> 
>     Best regards
>     Nio
> 
>     -------- Original Message --------
>     Subject: One button installer for Lubuntu
>     Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 01:42:59 +0200
>     From: Nio Wiklund <nio.wiklund at gmail.com <mailto:nio.wiklund at gmail.com>>
>     To: Ali Linx (amjjawad) <amjjawad at gmail.com <mailto:amjjawad at gmail.com>>
>     CC: Phill Whiteside <PhillW at ubuntu.com <mailto:PhillW at ubuntu.com>>,
>      Jonathan Marsden
>     <jmarsden at fastmail.fm <mailto:jmarsden at fastmail.fm>>
> 
>     Hi,
> 
>     Is there a way to make a simple mode to install, provided the whole
>     drive is to be used, as it is intended in the case of replacing Windows
>     in fairly old computers with 256 (and 512) MB RAM?
> 
>     First I was thinking of some kind of 'batch mode', without questions,
>     once you have connected to the computer. It should install to the first
>     drive.
> 
>     But I have good experiences of the portability of installed systems on
>     USB drives. So I would rather do it like this:
> 
>     0. Assume there is one internal drive (/dev/sda), and that it should be
>     converted to Lubuntu. (Otherwise other methods should be used.)
> 
>     1. Fill the drive with
> 
>     1.1 a root partition and
>     1.2 a swap partition, size = sizeofRAM + 1GB
> 
>     2. Expand a compressed image of Lubuntu
> 
>     See this example
> 
>     https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstalledSystemFakePAE
> 
>     where there is actually only one crucial command line
> 
>     zcat dd-sdb.img.gz | dd bs=4096 of=/dev/sda
> 
>     I do not assume we should use that version off the shelf. It was made
>     for a special reason and limited size. Writing first the bootloader and
>     then the partition /dev/sda1 from a tarball should do it within a short
>     script. The host name and user name are easily fixed with a button on
>     the desktop after installation (let the original user be the admin and
>     make a new one). A button would be the solution for the proprietary
>     software too, for graphics as well as for multimedia.
> 
>     I don't have it but I could write that script, there is no need for
>     advanced programming languages if text mode is accepted. But today it
>     would imply a 2GB USB drive.
> 
>     I have not learned how to make the iso for a boot CD. I know of
>     Remastersys, maybe it still works, but I'm sure Canonical has better
>     tools. So returning to the first idea about a batch mode: Maybe it would
>     be fairly simple to add a one-button mode to the alternate installer or
>     the mini.iso wizard shell (to set all the other variables, if that mode
>     is selected).
> 
>     -o-
> 
>     One reason I started thinking about this is that most degrees of freedom
>     of the installer are cut off anyway, in order to succeed, when
>     installing into low RAM. And if you have to press certain buttons in a
>     certain order, it is better to have it fully automatic.
> 
>     And the the plans of the city council in Munick inspire ideas to make it
>     even easier to install Lubuntu.
> 
>     What about a
> 
>     *One button installer for Lubuntu*
> 
>     to make it easy enough to receive a mass migration from Windows XP
> 
>     Best regards
>     Nio
> 
>     --
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> "All of us are smarter than any one of us."
> 
> *Best Regards,*
> *amjjawad <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/amjjawad/>*
> *Start Ubuntu
> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/CommunicationsTeam/WOWLubuntu/StartUbuntu>*
> *My Own Business <http://alilinx.blogspot.com/>*
> 