Who needs a graphical installer, hu? 

I hope it will not be something like the Xubuntu thing. To install you need 192 RAM, to run the OS 64MB... come one... (yeah, I know its a live CD)

This live-CD GUI-installer was one reason which made me shifting to Zenwalk. ZW installer is simple and fast and it should be easy enough to be used even by newbies.
Please don't spend your time for developing any graphical installer, this time is better spend on improve the existing installer e.g. add support for LVM1/2 and/or support for encrypted filesystems (this would have a value for the Zenserver project too).

Normally the graphical GTK installer is in the field of Zenlive (which might be called Zenwalk live in the future).

Zenwalk ncurses installer will be improved, and may include a GTK option in the future, but this is not really planed nor decided as a target for Zenwalk 4.6.

I still believe that ncurses is a great interface, efficient, and compatible with ANY video device (btw it can be mouse driven as well with GPM).

Thus the installer is seen only once by the user, after the install everything can be graphical, so it's not really important if new users are disapointed by the ncurses look, if they're about to install Zenwalk they must know why, and it's certainly not for the installer.

Installing is the technical part of an OS usage : it looks technical in Zenwalk , so what ?

Cheers

JP

My money's on the ncurses installer.  Go JP!!

+1

Yeah stick with the ncurses based installer!
I wonder which is the target group of ZW?
ZW is based on Slackware, which is a technical orientated distri for intermediate or advanced users, so ZW is not meant to be yet another distri for noobs, am I right?
So why do we need to have graphical installers then? Even a newbie wouldn't need it if those people wouldn't be so afraid of and try using the ncurses based installer, then they probably would understand that's not complicated at all!

JP, please keep ZW the KISS way, don't try to become "xubuntu-like"...

Why not a technical orientated distri for intermediate or advanced users, installable by noobs ?
I was totaly noob when I installed ZW 1.3 for the first time, but I WANT to leave M$, so, I made an effort and installed ZW with the ncurses installer.
I really think that a lightweight GUI installer will be a big + for ZW : this will give an access to a technical orientated distri for intermediate or advanced users but for noobs. So they will progress, and become intermediate or advanced users
Free Softwares are made to be shared, so share, let's make zenwalk installable by noobs.

Just my 0.02€

Crocus

Ncurses based installer is the most fail-safe method. It works on every monitor. I hope the colour of the text is a little brighter.

Actually this is exactly what ZW already IS!




And I suppose you succeed, right? So, what's the problem then? You just prooved yourself beeing able to install ZW by using the ncurses based installer.
And you are now even a member of the ZW-Team yet! 




If Newbies are not willing to try CLI, they will IMHO never progress to become intermediate or advanced.
Also advanced users may not satisfied anymore with the distri if it becomes "ubuntu-like"




Yes, open source software is meant to be shared but this freedom has nothing to do with the ease of use.
However ease of use depends on how serious a person is to learn about how to setup things and get used to it.

The current ZW installer is not complicated at all, I really don't understand what makes some people thinking this is not easy to use? It does all the stuff for you, you don't even need to choose which packages to install...

Crocus: I think there already a lot of 'noobs' running Zenwalk (no offense); the installer might be a hurdle, but they take it.

All of us started as noobs, and I consider one remains a "noob" all his/her life. We only become more experienced.



My first noob experience was about 6 years ago with FreeBSD. Compared to the all text installer (I still think it was for experienced users) the Zenwalk installer is a breeze. But it leaves a lot of room for improvement. So +1 for the ncurses installer. Is better to improve the existing one than building a GTK installer that needs a lot of testing.

It should be more intuitive to use. Simplicity would keep ZW in the KISS way and also make it more simple to use, even for a noob.

As a conclusion, +1 for the developers. They did a nice thing so far and it can (and should) be improved.

For me as a long term BSD user ... +1 for a ncurses-based installer.

And ... btw ... it's not a question of graphical or ncurses or text based if an installer is easy or not. We are also able to create a horrible complicated graphical installer. 

Is there a way to adapt the colors of the ncurses-menu to the standart ZENColors? The installer may be practical, for noobs/admisn, complicated/easy....whatever you agree to, you musst say that the installer is rather ugly. Colorwise.

I am trying Zenwalk again and I am not very impressed again. Your installer is not your biggest problem or hurdle. Anaconda is better by orders of magnitude but the installer is workable. Your problem is that there are many, many distributions that do more of what a computer user wants to do and a lot easier.

1. I can't play or figure out how to play an audio cd on 4.4.1 - Almost every other distro I have tried autoplays them or at least opens up a file browser asking you what you want to do. I have posted for this and am waiting for help. This would be a good tips post or something like that instead of just leaving it as a problem for each new user. I got some help on my post, but I was directed to a thread where the poster had no audio. I have all kinds of audio: I can play MP3 DVDs, I have system sound, I have a horrible noise coming out when I play a DVD movie. *** addenda: "aku" was helpful and posted again on my thread about playing CDs. I will try out his fix after I log out. I am logging out because I can't open the DVD drives drawer. Some app. probably audacious (which is now not even running) has maintained control over it even though it is not mounted. Come On....

2. I put a DVD of Lord Of the Rings in, Audio is some loud as hell noise. There is no suitable ao codec or something like that found. NO OTHER DISTRO HAD ANY PROBLEM PLAYING this DVD.  A few distros insist on leaving out the lvdvdcss so that needs to be installed, but then you're home free. There is nothing KISS about having to mess around to get these very, very basic things accomplished. Since Win 98, computer users have been able to start working and put a CD or DVD in and listen to music or watch a video. You're not there yet...

3. I have read posts on this forum about "moving up the distrowatch hit list" and all of that, so don't respond back like a bunch of elitists that think there is a good reason to put out an unpolished "expert" distro. You either want to be slackware or you want more users. Decide which is the case. Right now, you are far, far behind the following in usability (and I have all of these installed):

Mepis, PLinuxOS, even Vector, Ubuntu, Mint, Kororaa, Sabayon, elive, Blag,Vine, Pardus, Dream, KateOS, VLOS, Frugalware, Foresight, SUSE, Mandriva and others that I did not keep.