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 has been for a long time the toughest architecture of the three to support because ?DirectFrameBuffer seems particulary willing to mess up with input devices on PPCs. 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. 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

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

26/09/2006

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

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

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.