Please stop shoehorning everything into HTML/CSS/JS

Posted Nov 13, 2024 2:05 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118)
In reply to: Please stop shoehorning everything into HTML/CSS/JS by kreijack
Parent article: Anaconda’s new "Web UI" (Fedora Magazine)

> So, the only other explanation is that I am too old to understand why an HTML based gui is more attractive than a python/GTK based one

As someone in a sibling comment said, it's likely that web-devs are extremely easier to come by than someone proficient in Gtk.

According to the article, it's also "easier to update and maintain" than a Gtk desktop application, and while it makes no technical sense — sadly, web technologies are simply where all the mindshare is. It's literally "more attractive", much to the disappointment of those of us who prefer actual native applications.

Please stop shoehorning everything into HTML/CSS/JS

Posted Nov 13, 2024 6:43 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link] (2 responses)

I usually install Debian, haven't touched Fedora in a while, but what is the use of a GUI installer ?

In Debian the steps, everything on the screen is the same in the text UI-based installer.

Debian basically has a questions/decision tree system for the user to answer to know what actions to do, you can use a GUI or text UI or even CLI-like UI to ask/answer the same questions (or use a bootstrap 'preseed' config file to skip the question/answer).

I think when it comes to web interfaces, I think it would maybe be useful to have a web interface to help make a preseed file to help with automating installing lots of systems.

[1] https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/example-preseed.txt

Please stop shoehorning everything into HTML/CSS/JS

Posted Nov 13, 2024 12:42 UTC (Wed) by m4rtink (guest, #95458) [Link]

>I usually install Debian, haven't touched Fedora in a while, but what is the use of a GUI installer ?

Anaconda also has a TUI - it can be seen on this older screenshot from Fedora Magazine for example:
https://fedoramagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/tui...

It is also possible to fully automate the installation using kickstart:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora/f36/install-g...

Other things can be configured via boot options:
https://anaconda-installer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/boot-options.html

Or configuration files:
https://anaconda-installer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuration-files.html

GUI is only one of the possible ways of interacting with the installer. :)

Please stop shoehorning everything into HTML/CSS/JS

Posted Nov 13, 2024 14:38 UTC (Wed) by smcv (subscriber, #53363) [Link]

> what is the use of a GUI installer ?

The reason Debian eventually gained one is: internationalization. For languages that are written with a small alphabet (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek) it's fairly easy to set up a TUI in the console character grid, but for languages with lots of characters (notably Chinese/Japanese/Korean) or languages that rely on letter-shaping (Arabic), you really need a fully-featured graphics library to be able to draw legible text.

Making new users feel more at home ("this looks difficult, like a thing for hackers" vs. "this looks a bit like Windows/macOS, how hard can it be?") is a side benefit of offering a GUI installer, but quite an important one IMO: first impressions do matter.