John on S8

[John]

My comments re the install are shorter this time. OTHO, since the system 
is technically usable;-) I have some comments there.

The MUT (Amdahl technical term, Machine Under Test) is a Gateway Pentium 
III, Intel BX chipset, 256 Mbytes of RAM, 10 Gb WD drive, ATI Rage, 3COM 
onboard LAN (not connected). It has an Acer 77c monitor which can do 
1280x1024.

At some point in the near future, this will become Mrs Summerfield's 
computer. Mrs S is a kindergarten teacher; a (small) people person, not 
a computer person. She complains when things change (and sometimes when 
they don't). OTOH over the years she has used CP/M-86, DOS, OS/2, Linux 
(Red hat and Debian) and Windows. In that order.

Before the handover, it will have wireless.

I was previously running Sarge on this with a 20" monitor at 1600x1200@75

I booted with "vga=791."

I got to the disk paritioning easily enough, and allowed autoparitiioning.

I felt it wasn't showing me what it really was doing (it actually was), 
and I didn't want the swap partition. I chose "no" and found the 
resulting menus too confusing (confused) to bother with,

<ctl>-<alt>-<del>

This time I accepted the offered paritioning and let it get on with it. 
I fully expect to reinstall MUT a time or two more before letting 
Suzanne have her computer.

I think hiding the grub menu a mistake, and I thought the default delay 
a little short.

I think hiding the menu a mistake because I've sometimes recognised that 
the default was wrong.

I prefer ten seconds delay before booting.

Both these problems combine to make boot-related problems a bitch to 
diagnose by phione.

User account
I accidently typed "Summer" meaning "summer," and the "error" was not 
reported to me until after I had supplied the password.

I'm not sure that "Summer" really is invalid. I can imagine it would 
cause problems with email, but I think it should work aside from that. 
Certainly, useradd is fine with it:
Kookaburra:~# useradd Birk
Kookaburra:~#
adduser complains, but allows one to insist.

However, that's a minor point; what irritated me was its description as 
an error.


The assumption computers clocks are set to UTC is unsound.


Why ask about configuring ppp during boot? We're installing from CD.



First login.
I logged in with my own account and had a look around.
Screen res is 1024x768 which suits Mrs S (but not me).

Here I am surmising how Suzanne would get along with this. Possibly, I 
will put a future release to the test, but I don't think domestic 
harmony would be enhanced by offering her this.

I think that she will be confused. For years, there's been a start 
button at the bottom of the screen, now there's not. That certainly 
confused me!

I dropped down the Applications menu:
  Accessories:
    I think she would understand "Calc" and "Dictionary," and nothing else.
  Graphics:
    None.
  Internet:
    She might recongise IRC because her university wanted her to be able 
to use it, some years ago. The rest, no chance. She _would_ recognise 
_web browser_ but it's not there. She would recognise _email_ but that's 
not there either.
  Multimedia
     She would recognise "CD player," probably "Sound recorder," and 
"Volume control."
  Office
     Suzanne is familiar with the word processing component of OOo, and, 
once she found the Applications menu, would find it.
     What's Evolution?
(My question, why isn't in in Applications/Internet?)
    System Tools
       A complete mystery to her.

Computer
    System Configuration
      Nothing here is of interest to her, or even comprehensible. All 
that they serve to do is increase her confusion; were she more 
adventurous and working in a coporate office she may cause the 
administrators some annoyance by generating notices from sudo about her 
attempts to do things she ought not.



I will ask her, but I think she will not accept this software on her 
computer.
(she's just objected to the thought I might even think of changing 
anything!).