[ale] Fedora grousing

[Jim Kinney]

Chuck et al,

As a   l o n g   time red hat then fedora user, I thought the new installer
in fedora 18 was bad implementation of a decent but unpolished idea.
I think philosophically the idea is to make it so a total newbie could get
a working install. But it was done at the expense of all the experienced
users.
The partitioning tool is nearly useless. It allows ZERO control over mdraid
partitions. It's really only useful for making a simple desktop.
The package selection is crippled as well. Again simplicity trumps
functionality.
I suspect RHEL will fork anaconda out of need.
Kickstart is a great tool but it's for very advanced users not just average
users or even many pro admins will find it in their bag of tricks. Add to
it the commands change a bit with every release and it's a recipe for
rollout headaches. And it's got bugs. The command clearpart --all doesn't
support the --ondisk= flag so it only wipes sda. That fails for a 4 disk
box being repurposed! I had to manually zero out partition tables on all
drives before pxe booting kickstart of F19. And the current anaconda only
understands raid 1 with 2 partitions. A 3 or 4 will lock it up (spits dots
on the screen and hangs).

Sadly, it looks like Fedora is taking the path of decreasing flexibility to
increase ease of use without providing a means to support the familiar
extensive customizations. If it's an attempt to gain users by lowering the
bar for user skill, I strongly disagree. Winders and sMac are perfect for
the clueless masses. I don't want throngs of mentally lazy newbies using
sophisticated and dangerously powerful tools like Linux. Granted, Fedora
ships with all services off and selinux on full enforcing so it's quite
secure. But for noobs, that security is hidden from view and thus more
computer magic.
</rant>
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