Enhancement Request: Distribution with all utilities installed?

[jharris1993]

Greetings:

Note: This enhancement request applies particularly to the Cinnamon and Mate editions, to the extent that it applies to the other editions - KDE, Xfce, etc. that's OK too.

Enhancement Request:
Allow, or create an installation option for, the installation of the system utilities located on the Live DVD to the system install on disk.

Justification:
The live DVD contains a number of utilities, including things like Gparted, etc. This is very useful, especially if you need the live DVD to help repair a system.

Since the utilities are already on the disk, it seems rather mean to force the user to go install them after the fact. I would like to see these system utilities added to the installation package available. This could be a user-selectable option - even if it is off by default - it would be handy thing to have.

What say ye?

Jim (JR)

[Cosmo.]

I am only aware of 2 tools: Gparted and the Mint installer. The latter one obviously does not make any sense in the installed system. So what did you find else?

Besides that: I see at the moment merely the tendency to remove programs and functions, so I don't give this much chance. Besides that I support the idea of installing gparted by default.

[jharris1993]

I remember a few more than that, but maybe I'm thinking of an earlier release.

I'd love to see GParted included on the Cinnamon and Mate releases, as well as Grub-Customizer, even though it's on a private PPA. Quite frankly, I'd love to see that moved to the default repositories!

If I think of something else, I'll update.

Jim (JR)

[Cosmo.]

GC is not even - as you said - in the repositories and I am rather sure, that it was never on the live disk. I also strictly disagree with this point: GC is a software with high potential to create a unusable system. The point is, that GC does some changes int /etc.grub.d, which are in reality impossible to undo, if something goes wrong. It also does not provide any practical advantage; it is all about a screen which a user is expected to see at most for 10 seconds.

[jharris1993]

Cosmo,

I will agree with you in one respect, Grub Customizer can bork a system beyond all recognition. Of course, so can Parted, DD, or even rm -rf if not careful.

You are also correct in the contention that 99.99999. . . . .99999% of the Linux users - even the high-powered mondo-size server users - won't even think about grub2

In my case, (and there are other users who fall into use-cases like mine), I very often create multiple installs. Right now, I'm doing some bug testing for the open-soource flight simulator FlightGear, and I have a six-install system running two installs each of Cinnamon, Mate, and KDE - one each with the NVIDIA video driver and one without. Being able to edit the grub configuration to rename, reorder, and remove unwanted entries is critical with me.

An equivalent program for Win Vista +, is EasyBCD. Since I do multi-install Win systems - some with Linux, some without - EasyBCD and Grub Customizer can both be critical.

Jim (JR)

[Cosmo.]

Cosmo,

I will agree with you in one respect, Grub Customizer can bork a system beyond all recognition. Of course, so can Parted, DD, or even rm -rf if not careful.

Jim, there is a big difference between GC and all the rest (let us stay at gparted): You can install them and nothing bad happens. Nothing at all. But install and run GC (without actually changing anything at all) and /etc/grub.d is altered in a way, that it is unusable without GC. Trying to repair anything after GC is practically impossible. This makes the difference and is my point.
You can also uninstall other software without bad consequences (no missing dependencies assumed). You cannot do this with GC without bad consequences.

Doing silly things (some users here reported, that they were drunk and did some critical task without even being able to recognize, what they are doing) can always be done. Alone having sudo installed means, that you can do so much damage, that you can forget the system. But removing sudo would mean, that the system is not administrable at all. Obviously there are risks, which cannot get avoided and if users do mistakes - well, then mistakes are, what comes as result. - Alone the fact, that a live system with the ability to format a drive exists (and nobody will do a doubt, that this ability is absolutely indispensable) means, that this "tool" live system can be mis-used by the user to destroy data. The only way to avoid this is, to not use a computer at all. (But that might produce other problems.)

For destroying my user data - and that is the most precious content of the computer, all the software can get replaced - I do not even use any tool with elevated rights: Open the home, press ctrl-h to make hidden files visible and reachable, press ctrl-a, than del (or just shift-del). Anybody who wants to run a 100 % against user-mistakes secured system most go back to use paper and pen only to write and store data. So if the user data are the most valuable item on the hard drive, you must set the risk of any file manager (not elevated) much higher than anything what you mentioned in your post.

There are risks, which are needlessly there and where the user must handle the tools carefully and correctly, and there are such software, where the risk is beyond any reasonable limit.

To make the case even worse: GC is made for multiboot systems, with a single boot system it is as useful as a cold in the winter or swimming googles in the desert. If the grub system gets damaged beyond repair, there are following that more than only one system affected. (A bowling player would proudly say: All nine. ) And this for a ten seconds screen. (I personally don't look at it, if I want to boot the preset system; I use the time to play with my dog. If I have to switch to another system, I select it and press Enter to launch the boot process, but surely I do not wait for 10 seconds until I do so. So no, I never see this screen for 10 seconds, so the risk-profit-relationship is as bad, as it only can be.)

So no, you cannot compare the risk of GC with that of GParted or numerous command line tools (or ...).

[jharris1993]

This is interesting.

I have never borked a system beyond repair with GC. Hand editing the configuration files? Yes. GC? no.

The worst case would be needing to re-edit the files using a live CD, running grub-update and then grub-install.

IMHO if you are creating multiple partition, multiple hd installs, you'd better know what you're doing anyway.

Jim (JR)

[Cosmo.]

IMHO if you are creating multiple partition, multiple hd installs, you'd better know what you're doing anyway.

Indeed. Another reason, why GC is not needed.

[austin.texas]

This is interesting.
I have never borked a system beyond repair with GC. Hand editing the configuration files? Yes. GC? no.

There was an example of this just a couple of days ago viewtopic.php?f=46&t=238221&p=1269634#p1269634

The worst case would be needing to re-edit the files using a live CD, running grub-update and then grub-install.

Unfortunately, that is too simplistic. Re-editing the files is easy. Dealing with the mess created by Grub Customizer is a whole new ballgame...

[jharris1993]

Obviously I can't argue with your experiences, since I've never seen them.

The worst I've seen is an install that crossed multiple hard drives, with multiple boot environments, where I wanted each environment to be able to move both backward and forward through the boot menus, one to the other.

Compared to that, everything else is gravy!

I'm sorry, I've just never seen the issues you describe.

Jim (JR)

[xenopeek]

Such additional utilities can be installed after installing Linux Mint easily by the user. Linux Mint tries to keep its installer as quick and simple as can be, with only as much things for the user to think about as needed, and such optional questions as you propose don't fit well with that.

[jharris1993]

Point noted, I concede defeat on this one. . .

Maybe I should consider a custom re-spin, eh?

Jim (JR)