Run or install?
I think I prefer David's version.

- Install
- Try without installing
- Cancel and boot from disk
- Advanced options ...


-----Original Message-----
From: Ros-dev [mailto:ros-dev-bounces@reactos.org] On Behalf Of Giannis Adamopoulos
Sent: 05 July 2017 14:03
To: ReactOS Development List <ros-dev@reactos.org>
Subject: Re: [ros-dev] About the bootcd and livecd, and the 1st-stage GUI setup

I'd say that we should show:
- Run or install ReactOS
- Boot from hard disk
- Advanced options

Nothing more should be needed and the first option should be clear that can either lead to a live environment or a setup.


David Quintana (gigaherz) <gigaherz@gmail.com> wrote on Tue, July 4th, 2017, 10:45 PM:

 I feel like the boot menu is going to be far too busy for the end
 user. I'd go with something closer to

 blah blah:

    - Install Now
    - Try without installing
    - Show advanced options...

 where:

    - Install now -- boots into the graphical installer (no desktop unless
    you cancel or something)
    - Try without installing -- boots into livecd desktop (backed by RAM, I
    guess)
    - Show advanced options... -- opens a second-level menu with
    - Text-mode installer
       - Live boot without Ramdisk
       - etc.



 On 4 July 2017 at 21:45, Hermès BÉLUSCA-MAÏTO <hermes.belusca@sfr.fr> wrote:

 > Hello everyone,
 >
 >
 >
 > One of the long-term plan for ReactOS was to have a graphical
 > user-mode interface for the 1st-stage setup, similar to e.g. what
 > may be found in newer versions of Windows (Vista+), as an
 > alternative to our current 1st-stage setup in text-mode
 >
 > (note that I say “alternative”, not “replacement”, because both of
 > them can live together without fundamental changes to either ReactOS
 > or our ISO images, both of them can share core functionality, and
 > finally because some people may prefer the text-mode either for
 > unattended installations or for low-memory conditions).
 >
 >
 >
 > You can find some information about the 1st-stage GUI setup here:
 > https://reactos.org/wiki/First_Stage_GUI_Setup . In our source code,
 > it can be found in base/setup/reactos/ . Currently only most of the
 > screens have been implemented, while the core functionality is not
 > present. However this functionality can somehow be taken by reusing
 > the source code of USETUP (see my branch
 > https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos/branches/setup_
 > improvements/base/setup/ ).
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 > Abstract (aka. TL;DR): I explain below the needed changes introduced
 > experimentally in the “setup-improvements” branch, revision 75273,
 > to generate an all-in-one ReactOS bootcd, that includes both the
 > 1st-stage text-mode setup + 1st-stage GUI setup alternative +
 > live-demo functionality. This is meant to replace our currently
 > separated “bootcd” / “livecd” ISOs, where the latter currently do
 > not offer the possibility to install ReactOS. Some currently known potential problems are evoked.
 >
 >
 >
 > Images: Proposed BootCD contents : http://i.imgur.com/EBA6JHd.png ;
 > Proposed Boot Menu : http://i.imgur.com/14n5Ryi.png .
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 > Having a 1st-stage GUI setup also means that it’ll also use the
 > already-existing functionality that we offer in our “Live-CD” ISOs.
 > Currently, the “Live-CD” ISOs we provide only allow for
 > demonstration purposes, while the ReactOS installation proper is
 > found in our so-called “Boot-CD” ISOs (which currently only contain
 > text-mode setup). Thus, the 1 st-stage GUI setup, as an alternative
 > to the 1st-stage setup in text-mode, means that both ISOs can be
 > merged all in one, and we won’t have to make a distinction between
 > both: they will be able to offer both the 1 st-stage in text mode
 > AND a graphical mode (à la “Live-CD”) where it is possible to choose
 > whether to test ReactOS in demo mode, or to install it via the GUI setup.
 >
 > Such an all-in-one ISO capability was already present in the trunk
 > under the name “hybridcd”, but was used only when we built ISO
 > images for the public events where ReactOS participated (FOSDEM,
 > CLT, …). But now, having the setup process both in text mode and in
 > graphics mode, in addition to the Live-CD demonstration capability,
 > really suggests just using the all-in-one ISO and stop doing the “Boot-CD” (aka. only setup) vs. “Live-CD”
 > (aka. only demo) separation. We would just generate only one type of
 > ISO that contains everything.
 >
 >
 >
 > With that in mind, I have committed in my branch
 > “setup_improvements”, in revision 75273 :
 > https://svn.reactos.org/svn/reactos?view=revision&
 > revision=75273 such changes to be able to only build an ISO that
 > contains everything. These changes are minimal, in the sense that I
 > haven’t purposelessly changed the names of the build targets just to
 > be fancy. Such changes may be done later, but not now.
 >
 >
 >
 > The needed changes are the following: First, the build target that
 > will generate the all-in-one CD is called “bootcd”, because this
 > also was the main build target for ISOs before the change. Second, I
 > completely remove the “hybridcd” build target, because its
 > functionality are now absorbed by “bootcd”. Third, the build target
 > “livecd” is reduced to its strict minimum. For the sake of building
 > a RAMDISK boot drive (see comments after), I continue to generate an
 > ISO for “livecd”. But I’ve changed the generated name to
 > “liveimage.iso”, to emphasize the point that it has to be understood
 > as a (virtual) disk image for RAMDISK purposes, not just as a ISO
 > image. Note that I haven’t renamed the build target “livecd” to,
 > say, “liveimage” to reduce my commit changes (such a renaming may be
 > done later). The “livecd” target builds a list of files that need to
 > be present in the image. The generated liveimage.iso is no-more a
 > bootable ISO, I’ve removed inclusion of freeloader + El-Torito boot-sector + the USB-ISO-Hybrid functionality for it.
 >
 > The “bootcd” target has been slightly changed in order to include
 > the liveimage.iso as a file (for RAMDISK), and to also add the
 > contents of this image in a flattened tree within the bootcd iso:
 > the two directories “Profiles” and “reactos”.
 >
 > The 1st-stage text-mode setup is kept, as said before, but its
 > corresponding files + the installation CAB source + the 1st-stage
 > GUI setup application proper goes into a (renamed) directory called
 > “i386”, corresponding to installation files for an i386 installation
 > (technically,
 > 1 per architecture when we’ll have a ReactOS ported to other archs).
 > These files cannot be present in the same “reactos” directory as the
 > ones from the flattened LiveImage, because some of the files are
 > different (smss.exe, registry, etc…) Our FreeLdr knows from where to
 > boot the 1st-stage text-mode (from i386), as well as the Live-demo
 > in graphics mode (from reactos).
 >
 > I need to adjust the code of few setup components for them to stop
 > relying on hardcoded “reactos/” path, and instead use a more
 > “dynamic” (determined at runtime) path.
 >
 >
 >
 > NOTE FOR DEVS/SYSADMINS: The “bootcdregtest” build target,
 > generating the special ISO that is fed to our test bots, remains
 > exactly the same, and the files contained in the generated ISO have not changed.
 >
 >
 >
 > NOTE about the RAMDISK feature: I enabled it so that a user can
 > remove the demo media (CD, …) and reuse the drive for other
 > purposes, while still being able to use ReactOS. Of course this
 > requires a large amount of RAM available. And that’s also why I
 > include the flattened liveimage files so that one can use the demo
 > without the RAMDISK (when few memory is available).
 >
 > As is currently implemented, this makes the ReactOS all-in-one
 > bootcd large (it gains a good 100 MB) due to duplicated space (the
 > flattened files, plus the same inside “liveimage.iso”). I cannot do
 > better (unless ditching either the RAMDISK, or keeping it but not
 > include the flattened
 > files) because ReactOS currently doesn’t have a way to boot from
 > disk images **that are not meant to be a RAMDISK**. The day when
 > this difficulty is removed, a single disk image could be used either
 > as the RAMDISK or the (non-removable) installation.
 >
 > A second remark is that I don’t plan to have the 1st-stage GUI setup
 > available when booting ReactOS in RAMDISK mode because, as a
 > consequence of its current implementation, I would otherwise need to
 > duplicate the installation CAB source in the RAMDISK image too, making it again larger.
 >
 >
 >
 > NOTE about the FreeLdr Boot Menu: Since ReactOS is not that stable
 > currently, we like to boot it in debug mode, and redirect the output
 > to a serial port (usually COM1). However some people don’t have
 > serial ports on real hardware, so we propose to boot with debug
 > output redirected to screen. However this may slow ReactOS down, so
 > we also like to boot ReactOS with debug mode disabled. That’s why I
 > proposed the declination of these boot modes for each ReactOS
 > installation contained in the BootCD (Live+Setup, with or without
 > RAMDISK, and with debug enabled or not). The problem is that it
 > clutters a lot the boot menu. A remedy would be to implement in
 > FreeLdr the functionality of editing **existing** boot entries to
 > change their associated boot options, so that one could add by hand
 > the options to enable (or disable) debugging. This is currently
 > unimplemented. The only implemented feature is to set up a new boot entry on the fly to boot ReactOS afterwards.
 >
 >
 >
 > NOTE for regress-testers: Possible remark that I may hear: “I only
 > care about installing ReactOS (perhaps just in unattended mode) and
 > I don’t care at all about the GUI setup nor about the Live-demo
 > thingie, and your new BootCD is too large. I want to be able to
 > download & use the good-old bootcd for regress-testing.” . So what
 > to do? Since we currently build and store the “bootcdregtest” ISOs,
 > but are not publicly available through our www.reactos.org/getbuilds
 > interface, I would suggest here to make them available to people, so
 > that those who want to quickly DL and/or install/regress-test
 > ReactOS could use these ISOs instead (which are really just the good
 > old BootCDs, but with unattended installation enabled **and** with
 > our test-suite included). They are not that much large, just a bit more than the old regular bootcd.
 >
 >
 >
 > Please let me know whether you have other
 > remarks/comments/questions/suggestions/etc…
 > to make the new BootCDs better.
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 > Best,
 >
 >
 >
 > Hermès
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > Ros-dev mailing list
 > Ros-dev@reactos.org
 > http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
 >

_______________________________________________
Ros-dev mailing list
Ros-dev@reactos.org
http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev


_______________________________________________
Ros-dev mailing list
Ros-dev@reactos.org
http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev