So, here I am, 1am and nothing (interesting) to do. Time for something completely random, I think! Let's do a network install SUSE.
- plus Like the graphical "thing" that starts right away from the CD.
- minus "Press Esc for more information" it says. Do that, and you're dumped to text-mode - which is ok - but there's no way to get back to graphical-land (that I could find).
- minus In the default graphical-land, the download of the network installer (all 65MB of it!) happens with no progress indication. The text-mode loader does show the percentage, though.
- minus After all that pretty graphics (that did very little, mind), it imediately dumps you into text-mode YaST. Not fun!
- minus Navigation in the text-mode YaST is a real bitch. It just seems to not follow any sort of convention. Esc never seems to close things, even the Help window which says it does! (Thank Bob that F1 also closes that window.)
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minus It asks me whether I want KDE or GNOME. How the f**k should I know? So it helpfully explains how my decision will affect things:
- KDE is a powerful and intuitive desktop environment that uses Kontact as its mailer and Konqueror as its browser and file manager.
- GNOME is a powerful and intuitive desktop environment that uses Evolution as its mailer, Firefox as its browser, and Nautilus as its file manager.
Joy of joys. They're the same. Why tell me what apps they use, when I've no idea what the difference in them are? If I didn't already know what these apps are like, or that KDE is supported better by SUSE, I'd be completely fucked at this point - it's anybody's guess which would be the better option. Oh, and there's an Other button too!
- minus Now it analyses my system, and starts "Evaluating package selection..." (all I did was pick KDE), which really means let me download some more data with no progress indication. Judging by the time taken and my network graphs, I'd say it is probably downloading about 30MB.
- minus And it's at this point (2:33am) that YaST just hangs entirely. Woohoo. Can't "click" (use the shortcut Alt-<letter>) any buttons, bring up help or anything, and it still says "Analysing your system..." under Software and Language.
- AHA! 8 minutes later (!) it finally is done and ready for me to use it again. That was really bad.
- minus Doing anything in the "Installation Settings" screen seems to take a decade to work, even opening the list of things to change (4 items)! Click accept button (2:46am).
- Two minutes later, is asks if I'm sure I want to install! And now it starts formatting the disk.
- minus By 3am, it's failed on the formatting. "An error occured during the installation." Joy.
And that's it. Can't get it to continue from this point - it spams something to the screen that looks like an error, but overwrites it with the error dialog almost instantly, and Ctrl-Alt-<number> doesn't work so I can't get at any logs or anything. Sucky.