We will try to ensure that questions which are asked of the user (which should be kept to a minimum) make sense even with a minimum of computer knowledge. Many Debian packages today present the user with difficult technical details. For example, if you simply select the "desktop environment" and "development environment" tasks during a woody installation, the first thing you will be presented with after all the packages are downloaded is a debconf prompt from binutils about "kernel link failure info". To the novice, this kind of thing is confusing and frightening. To the expert, this is annoying and unnecessary. Right after this question is one from less which asks something about a MIME handler. A novice doesn't even know what MIME is. An expert can configure less however they like it after the installation is complete. The priority of these kinds of Debconf questions should be at least lowered.
(Happily, many of these issues are already fixed for the sarge release using debian-installer, which will make the default debconf priority be "high").
[^] # Re: Debian a 10 ans !
Posté par ptit_tux . En réponse à la dépêche Debian a 10 ans !. Évalué à -3.
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-desktop/(...)
We will try to ensure that questions which are asked of the user (which should be kept to a minimum) make sense even with a minimum of computer knowledge. Many Debian packages today present the user with difficult technical details. For example, if you simply select the "desktop environment" and "development environment" tasks during a woody installation, the first thing you will be presented with after all the packages are downloaded is a debconf prompt from binutils about "kernel link failure info". To the novice, this kind of thing is confusing and frightening. To the expert, this is annoying and unnecessary. Right after this question is one from less which asks something about a MIME handler. A novice doesn't even know what MIME is. An expert can configure less however they like it after the installation is complete. The priority of these kinds of Debconf questions should be at least lowered.
(Happily, many of these issues are already fixed for the sarge release using debian-installer, which will make the default debconf priority be "high").