Suggestions for LiveCD installer on Dapper

[Dennis Drescher]

I've installed Flight 5 on my Dell Latitude D610 from the LiveCD using 
the new installer. Very nice! I do have some suggestions which I think 
would help from a usability standpoint, especially for more novice 
users. I don't think they would be hard to implement. These are not bugs 
so I'm not sure where to direct them, so I'll list them here.

1) Partitioning: I wasn't doing a fresh install. I needed to install in 
another existing partition. Having the partition manager pop up was 
impressive but it was confusing and not helpful. I continued on 
(stumbled on was more like it) and came to the dialog that let me select 
existing partitions with a check box for formating and a drop-down list 
to specify what it is for. Is there anyway to get that to pop up before 
the partition manager. Or, allow more editing in the partition manager 
so I can simply select the partitions I want to work with and tell it 
which ones to format. (I realize this is a sticky area but novice users 
are going to need more clues as to what to do.)

2) At one point, while it was copying files, it appeared to be hung up 
on the language packs. I thought it had crashed but it was really doing 
something in the background. Could some kind of message be displayed 
during points like these to assure users that everything is still moving 
along.

3) When is started to do some of the final setup work the screen saver 
came on. It was one that I was not familiar with and it looked like it 
was doing some display tests. Meanwhile a dialog was waiting for my 
input. Yes, I know I should be able to tell the difference between 
screen tests and screen savers but in this case it caught me off guard 
and made the install take longer because it was waiting on me. The 
simple solution would be for the installer to automatically disable the 
screen saver when starts up. Since you need to reboot afterwards there 
is no longer any need for it during that session anyway. IMHO.

4) This may not be an installer problem but the shutdown didn't work and 
the machine locked up hard. This has happened to me a number of times in 
other situations so I did a hard reset. However, for a first time user, 
this may not inspire confidence. It would be nice if situations like 
that could be avoided.

That's my list. I hope this gets into the hands of the developers. Thanks!

Regards,

Dennis