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This issue will get automatically fixed when we switch to DFB 1.0, which natively includes the fix.
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This resulted in the inclusion into rootskel and rootskel-gtk packages of ah hoc startup scripts that take care of picking correct DirectFB input driver depending on the architecture.
My plans are (if i will ever be able to put my hands on a PPC box) to fix the bug upstream in DFB, backport the patch to debian sources and get us rid of those messy startup scripts.

Introduction

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

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 [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=cdebconf-gtk-udeb cdebconf-gtk-udeb], [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=directfb directfb], [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=libdirectfb-0.9-25-udeb libdirectfb-0.9-25-udeb], [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=libgtk-directfb-2.0-0 libgtk-directfb-2.0-0], [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=libgtk-directfb-2.0-0 libgtk-directfb-2.0-0-udeb], [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=rootskel rootskel], [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=rootskel-gtk rootskel-gtk]

?TableOfContents([2])

Architecture independent issues

  • Develop real graphical interfaces for components where that adds value. Main example is partitioning.
  • Try to find a way to present information in columns despite using a proportional font. This may require extensions to the debconf protocol. This should also be generally useful for frontends used in the installed system for configuring packages. This idea could be extended to providing basic support for buleted or numbered lists.
  • Input is not handled in UTF-8 mode, some letters cannot be correctly typed. [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=401296 #401296]

  • Support for dead keys was added in DFB post 0.9.25, but GTKDFB does not handle deadkeys anyway, so backporting the DrectFB patch is useless ATM [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=394871 #394871]

  • Touchpad support in linux_input was added to DFB in CVS and then backported to 0.9.25-5 via a patch i wrote; Ville Sryala produced an updated, better, patch which unluckily crashes on some systems and hence we weren't able to include in our sources.?BRAs we want to give best support possible to laptop users Ville's patch should be fixed and backported in our sources. [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=400579 #400579]

This issue will get automatically fixed when we switch to DFB 1.0, which natively includes the fix.

Per-architecture issues

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

i386 specific

  • For historical reasons the vga16fb module is still loaded even if a framebuffer device is already provided by vesafb: this forced us to check that DirectFB actually accesses the framebuffer device provided by vesafb , better would be not starting at all two fb devices concurrently (this also wastes little memory). [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=401685 #401685]

  • Some popular video chips, like intel i810, are not supported by the vesafb framebuffer module and hw-specific modules are not available in the installer, so we cannot currently support those chips. We need to either build into the kernel or provide as loadable modules hw specific framebuffer modules, and load them on the base of the found hardware [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=405737 #405737].

AMD64 specific

Proper fix requires adding that library via an udeb, or removing pthread_cancel() calls from DirectFB source code.

PowerPC specific

  • On PPC the framebuffer device has a fixed size that cannot be set at boot like it's done on i386, so the GTK frontend should adapt itself to go "fullscreen". [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=401693 #401693]

  • DirectFB's linux_input input module seems particularly willing to crash on this architecture, and as a result we had to selectively disable such module basing on experiments on on various PPC boxes.

This resulted in the inclusion into rootskel and rootskel-gtk packages of ah hoc startup scripts that take care of picking correct DirectFB input driver depending on the architecture. My plans are (if i will ever be able to put my hands on a PPC box) to fix the bug upstream in DFB, backport the patch to debian sources and get us rid of those messy startup scripts.

Read also this long [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=342053 thread] about the g-i on PPC machines.

Tester

Test date

Model

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep board

cat /proc/fb

lspci | grep VGA

Magic directfbrc

Bad directfbrc lines

Notes

Sven Luther luther@debian.org

22/09/2006

Pegasos

CHRP Pegasos

0 ATI Radeon Yd

ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] (rev 01)

no-hardware

Sven Luther luther@debian.org

22/09/2006

Pegasos

CHRP Pegasos

0 ATI Radeon NH

ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800 Pro]

no-hardware disable-module=radeon

alessandro de zorzi lota@klez.it

27/09/2006

ibook G4

?PowerBook6,7 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon NV

ATI Technologies Inc M11 NV [FireGL Mobility T2e] (rev 80)

no-hardware

disable-module=linux_input

Jack Malmostoso jackmalmostoso@freesurf.ch

26/09/2006

ibook G4

?PowerBook6,3 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon /c

ATI Technologies INC M9+ 5C63 [Radeon Mobility 9200 (AGP)] (rev 01)

no-hardware disable-module=linux_input

Elena Grassi grassi.e@gmail.com

05/10/2006

ibook G3

?PowerBook4,3 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon LW

ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]

no-hardware disable-module=linux_input

It needs video=radeonfb to be specified at boot time, otherwise even the textual console is corrupted

Luca Suriano luka@linux.it

01/10/2006

ibook G3

?PowerBook4,3 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon LW

ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]

no-hardware disable-module=linux_input

Marco Bertorello marco@nosgoth.homelinux.org

26/09/2006

ibook G4

?PowerBook 6,5 ?MacRisc3 Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon \c

ATI TECHNOLOGIES Inc. M9+ 5C63 [Radeon Mobility 9200 (AGP)] (rev 01)

no-hardware disable-module=linux_input

Attilio Fiandrotti

26/09/2006

ibook G4

?PowerBook6,7 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon NV

ATI Technologies Inc M11 NV [FireGL Mobility T2e] (rev 80)

no-hardware

disable-module=linux_input

Rick Thomas rbthomas55@pobox.com

26/09/2006

PowerMac G4

?PowerMac3,5 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon QW

ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV200 QW [Radeon 7500]

Unsupported video format dtected (!) DirectFB/FBDev: Current mode's pixelformat: rgba 8/0, 8/0, 8/0, 0/0 (8bit)

Rick Thomas rbthomas55@pobox.com

01/10/2006

PowerMac G3 [Blue&White]

?PowerMac1,1

0 OFfb ATY,XCLAIM

ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro (rev 5c)

no way to make this work

requires boot arg "video=ofonly" to even do text mode install. Details in Bug#342053

Rick Thomas rbthomas55@pobox.com

01/10/2006

PowerMac G4 [?QuickSilver]

?PowerMac3,4

0 ATY Rage128

ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 PF/PRO AGP 4x TMDS

independant of enable or disable "linux_input"

Mirko Grava mgrava@rhx.it

27/09/2006

ibook G4

?PowerBook5,4 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon NP

VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10] (prog-if 00 [VGA])

no-hardware

Eddy Petrișor eddy.petrisor@gmail.com

27/09/2006

powerbook G4

?PowerBook5,2 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon NP

ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]

no-hardware disable-module=linux_input

disable-module=radeon has no ill effects

Attilio Fiandrotti

29/09/2006

MiniMAC

?PowerBook10,2 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh

ATI Radeon Yb

ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Raeon9200] (rev 01)

no-hardware disable-module=linux_input

Keymap was messed up in DFB after language change

Sven Luther luther@debian.org

30/09/2006

XServe G5

?RackMac3,1 MacRISC4 Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon QY

ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]

disable-module=radeon disable-module=linux_input

Jan Schukat shookie@email.de

02/10/2006

PowerMac G5

?PowerMac7,3 MacRISC4 Power Macintosh

0 NV32

nVidia Corporation NV34 [?GeForce FX 5200 Ultra] (rev a1)

no way to make this work

Diego Biurrn diego AT biurrun DOT de

05/10/2006

?PowerBook G4

?PowerBook6,8 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh

0 NV32

nVidia Corporation NV34M [?GeForce FX Go5200] (rev a1)

[http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2006/10/msg00066.html no way to make this work]

Holger Levsen debian@layer-acht.org

03/11/2006

imac g3 233mhz

motherboard : iMac MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATY Mach64

00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage IIC 215IIC [Mach64 GT IIC] (rev 3a)

just works fine :-)

Giuseppe Sacco eppesuig@debian.org

10/12/2006

?PowerBook G4 15"

?PowerBook3,5 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon Lf

ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R250 Lf [FireGL 9000] (rev 01)

Works like a charm

CharlesPlessy

14/03/2007

iMac G5 rev. A

?PowerMac8,1 MacRISC4 Power Macintosh

0 OFfb NVDA,Displ

nVidia Corporation NV34M [?GeForce FX Go5200] (rev a1)

?

?

Could not open the Alt+F2 console

Ideas for future development

Porting

The graphical version of the installer is currently available for Intel x86, AMD64 and PowerPC. The PowerPC port [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=341597 needs work] 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 should adapt itself so that text blocks are never too wide for optimal readability.
  • Improve accessability (for the visually handicapped). One way to do this is to [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=339735 support different themes] (color schemes). (Note: should not lead to a major increase in initrd size.)

  • Alternative (graphical) ways to start a shell or browse log files.
  • Interface design.
  • Create custom plug-ins for cdebconf to improve handling of some dialogs and make optimal use of possibilities offered by the graphical environment.

Interface design

Most of the work on the graphical side has been done by Eduardo Silva. He has set up a [http://www.geocities.com/jobezone/d-i_gtk.html 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.

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.