SimplifyOEMInstallation

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Summary

Rationale

Use cases

Scope

Design

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

oem-config was written in Breezy, has only been partially maintained since then, and has a number of bugs and uglinesses that turn people off.

In order to fix this up properly, we need feedback from OEMs regarding what they actually need. Canonical is in the process of soliciting feedback from OEMs we know about.

How applicable is the oem config stuff for standardized deployment of desktops, workstations, etc.?  (Within a company or organization)  Might is be too narrowly targeted?
 The OEM installer is intended to reconfigure an install after shipping to end users; in this use case you need to re-ask some of the questions that would normally be asked by the installer. Companies/organisations could use it, but they tend to have more information about the end user (they know what language they speak, where they are, who they are, and can set default passwords), so it doesn't tend to apply to them so well in practice. They tend to be better served by automatic installations.

- extra drivers provided by OEM (making it easier to insert them and upgrade them later?)
- OEMs apparently often don't have established disk duplication facilities, and often just do every install themselves; try to provide something here?
        * aren't OEMs supposed to do installation by themselves anyway? yes, but ideally not for every single unit ... an OEM is a vendor selling thousands of the things *right, what about following then: make them setup one machine with this tool, save the the default configuration *somewhere* *perhaps integration with libburn?* and let them ship this along with installation cd to the clients who can easily do stuff then
prepare messaging on where the OEM installer is the right thing to use, and where there are alternatives that would do a better job (e.g. remastering the live CD)
- keep hardware redetection as a back-burner possibility; the code to do it exists in ubiquity, so it's possible

general improvements of oem-config:
 - core is an older version of ubiquity's core; should be merged into ubiquity to take advantage of later improvements and share UI development work
 - looks very poor due to not running inside a proper desktop session; should launch a trivial session just for oem-config
 - needs to be updated to use modern timezone map facilities, etc. (this would also make it easier to choose timezones that don't match up with a locale for your language)
 - tends to flicker strangely if questions are skipped; should skip pages properly in that event
 - no checking on username/password
 - maybe should just use a blank password for OEM customisation user?
 - put icon on desktop that runs a GUI over oem-config-prepare
 - reconfigure X resolution, since many people buy a computer but not a monitor

CategorySpec

SimplifyOEMInstallation (last edited 2008-08-06 16:30:48 by localhost)