Introduction

Overview of open issues and things to be done for the ["DebianInstaller/GUI"].

A complete list of bugs affecting the g-i can be found in the [http://bugs.debian.org/cdebconf-gtk-udeb bug reports against cdebconf-gtk-udeb] page.

?TableOfContents([2])

Per-architecture issues

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

i386 specific

AMD64 specific

PPC specific

PPC is the most problematic architecture of the three to be supported because ?DirectFrameBuffer seems particulary willing to crash on those machines (we currently experienced more failures that successes) Right now HW acceleration provided by DFB seems to be broken for almost every suported video chipset on PPCs, so it was forced off by default. Reported successes, even those which do not rewuire directfbrc to be tweaked, could not be reproduced with a straight boot into the graphical installer, but testers had to boot textual and then switch graphical. 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 mainboard

cat /proc/fb

lspci | grep VGA

Magic directfbrc

Bad directfbrc lines

Notes

alessandro de zorzi lota@klez.it

27/09/1980

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

26/09/1980

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

26/09/1980

ibook G3

?PowerBook4,3 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon LW

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

no way to make this work

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

Luca Suriano luka@linux.it

26/09/1980

ibook G3

?PowerBook4,3 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon LW

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

no way to make this work

Marco Bertorello marco@nosgoth.homelinux.org

26/09/1980

ibook G4

0 ATI Radeon /c

ati radeon mobility 9200

no way to make this work

Attilio Fiandrotti

26/09/1980

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

26/09/1980

ibook G4

?PowerMac3,5 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh

0 ATI Radeon QW

ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV200 QW [Radeon 7500]

no way to make this work

Mirko Grava mgrava@rhx.it

27/09/1980

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 Petricor eddy.petrisor@gmail.com

27/09/1980

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

TODO

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 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.

Reduce size of initrds

The initrds are currently very large which also results in fairly high memory requirements to run the graphical installer. Size has thus far not been a major concern, our focus has been on getting things working.

Options to reduce initrd size.

Update The size of the initrds is now down to around 10MB. Further reduction would be nice, but it is no longer a major issue.