Introduction

This is an overview of some of the bugs and issues left open or workarounded only in Etch and that i hope will be fixed later in a point release.

Items tagged as pointrelease are desiderata for next Etch pointrelease (mainly bugfixes), all other items refer to issues which will be addressed in Lenny only.

This is no way meant to be an exhaustive list of every bug somehow related to the graphical installer: for a complete buglist see packages cdebconf-gtk-udeb, directfb, libdirectfb-1.0-0-udeb, libgtk-directfb-2.0-0, libgtk-directfb-2.0-0-udeb, rootskel, rootskel-gtk.

Architecture independent issues

Per-architecture issues

We're trying to inventory bugs affecting the g-i on a per-architecture base, architectures considered here are i386, PowerPC, AMD64 .

i386 specific

AMD64 specific

PowerPC specific

Ideas for future development

Porting

The graphical version of the installer is currently available for Intel x86, AMD64 and PowerPC. The PowerPC port needs work (341597) to get different types of system correctly supported. Other architectures the graphical installer could be ported to include Sparc, Alpha and HPPA.

Fonts

For font information, please see DebianInstaller/GUIFonts

Usability

Interface design

Most of the work on the graphical side has been done by Eduardo Silva. He has set up a webpage with images he designed and some comments about possible future changes.

Games

It would be nice for g-i to have some games to help kill time during lengthy install sessions.

The cdebconf-gtk-tetris udeb is a start, but having a separate entry in the menu does not seem the best way to do it.

Other candidates for inclusion need to have a limited set of dependencies, preferable only those that are already included in g-i, use directfb for graphics, eventually using SDL, sound should be optional, and not need more input device than already detected by g-i.

This excludes c++ implemented games linked against libstdc++, or other language whose runtime is not-available in g-i, as well as all those that link with the gnome libs or other such. A preliminary list follows, out of them, icebreaker sounds like a very good candidate. It is only depending on libsdl, easy to understand, using only the mouse and not the keyboard, and not controversial in any way.