Install Wizard 'Looks Too Complicated'

[Conrad Knauer]

I just read the article "The Un-Scary Screwdriver" on
http://www.gnomejournal.org/article/88/the-un-scary-screwdriver (via
http://www.groklaw.net/newsitems.php) and the first part jumped out at
me:

---
One early spring day as we were walking home from the bakery on the
corner, we passed by a neighbor and struck up a conversation. He
complained about his desktop being constantly attacked by viruses. We
suggested Ubuntu. A professional man in his 50s, he said he wanted to
try installing a Linux distribution on his desktop but that, “it looks
too complicated. I probably couldn’t install Ubuntu. I don’t want the
hassle.”

My little five year old daughter had been snuggled in my arms while I
was talking to this neighbor. She had been listening closely. When we
got home, she said, “Mom, I can install Ubuntu. I bet I can. Can I
try? Can I try?”

As a mother who wants to foster her children’s interests in all things
technical and scientific, I dropped the loaf of french bread and
turned on a nearby desktop. I did a quick back-up and wiped the
system. I handed my daughter Anna an install CD and said, “Here you
go.”

Then I walked away.

>From the kitchen, I watched the install unfold. She insert the CD. She
read what she could on-screen and pressed Enter a lot. When she
couldn’t read something, she called her brother who was only one year
older, but who could read a few more words than she could. She yelled,
“Jake! Come here and tell me what this says!” Together they figured
out, “Hey, if you just press Enter, it usually works out fine.”

With a little bit of help from her six year old brother, Anna
successfully installed Ubuntu on a desktop. When she was done, I came
in and asked, while trying to squelch my pride, “So, sweetie, how did
it go?”

Anna’s reply, “Easy baceasy! That old foggy is just being silly. I can
install Ubuntu, so he can install it too.”
---

Specifically the part where the five and six year olds (!!!) say: "if
you just press Enter, it usually works out fine"

This implies to me that most of the install options in the Live CD
should be hidden by default (e.g. by triangles like the command line
output is hidden in Synaptic by default, or some other way... tabs?  A
menu like in the Netbook Remix?) and that as soon as Install is run
there can be a button to push to immediately install (e.g. in OEM
mode) if the user makes no changes.

The user has already picked a language when they started the Live CD,
so that's one thing they picked that they can change if they want, but
most won't change.

If the user is connected to the internet, might it be possible to
guess their physical location (e.g. for time zone) by IP address?
(http://www.tracemyip.org/ seems to be able to :) as most people will
want to install their systems where they are going to use them.

For the partitioning step, if there is another OS present, the default
option should be to install along side it; if none, use the whole
disk.  Partitioning is always a scary step, so that should be
generally hidden.

A look at the pics on
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2009/10/02/ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala-beta-reviewed-screenshots/
suggests:

Step 5 (user name, password, computer name) should be the first step
and really the only things that a user should need to fill in...
unless there's already an OS on the system that Ubuntu can extract a
u/n from :)

The bottom of the page should then have a [Review and Install] button
leading to what is now Step 6 which will spell out the changes and
then an [Install] button at the bottom of that.

Thoughts?

CK