[TriLUG] Here's an idea to make it easier to fix a Linux OS!!

[al johson]

>you should also make the installer be able to save state to some media
>(floppy? root partition?) as it goes so that if it _does_ die, when the
>user starts the install again, they can pick up where they left off
>(except for maybe that last step). nothing's worse than retyping pages and
>pages of data, especially if you were unsure of the answers to begin with.

I was thinking about the above comment and realized that this would be an
excellent opportunity for the manufacturer to figure out where they
weaknesses lie in their loaders!! in fact it would be very similar to what
happens when a desktop application fails and a report for the author is
created to help the author fix the problem. It is true that Red Hat or any
other distribution cannot know about weaknesses or failures if they are
never told. But the problem is an accurate description of the problem---esp.
if the problem is encountered by a novice or newbie. But if the problem
could be emailed to Red Hat or other distributors, it might be possible to
fix it, just like the application crash reports. I need not remind everyone,
I hope, that the father of the FSF says that the "price" of free software is
that the user is compelled to report bugs to the maker of that software so
that they can get it fixed. Even better would be a public site where
problems could be dumped and since the OS's are open source, one could hope
that programmers would help out with the fixes. You have to forgive me,
sometimes I get carried away :-)----Al
   P.S. I'll bet Microsoft would never air their software mistakes in
public!! And the open source community doing so (as they already do) adds
even more prestige over Microsoft who invariably always hides their problems
and ignores security holes discovered by others and reported to them.
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