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Cassidy James Blaede edited this page Jan 25, 2018 · 23 revisions

The installation experience should be attractive and effortless to reassure new users that their new OS is the right choice. The process should feel safe and should only highlight risk when necessary (e.g. when data will be destroyed). This installer intends to cater to:

  1. New users with no understanding of the nature of an operating system.
  2. Users who want to perform typical installations like a clean install or dual-boot in a hands-off manner.
  3. Expert users who have very specific configuration requirements.
  4. OEM-like users who are performing the OS installation, but leaving user-specific details for the final end user.

Every Install is an OEM Install

For the sake of providing a single installer experience, every install is treated as an OEM install; the primary purpose of the installer is to get the bootable OS onto a device. Additional setup (like creating users) will happen after the first boot into the clean system and not in the installer. This requires an initial setup tool in the installed OS.

Recovery

The installer may also be used as a recovery medium, whether used from an external drive or from a special partition on the device. If booting to the recovery partition, we may want to slightly tailor the experience and copy.

Downstream Customization

One goal of the installer is to be customizable by downstream projects wishing to ship it. We should include style classes in each view to facilitate custom CSS, and always use the system-wide OS name rather than hardcoding any specific OS.

Flow

The flow of the installer is relatively linear with a few areas that branch off.

  • Language
  • Keyboard Layout
  • Try or Install
  • Issue Detection
  • Encryption
    • Encryption Password
  • Installation Type (depends on your hardware and any existing installations)
    • Clean Drive
      • Choose Disk (Clean Install)
      • Set Partitions (Custom Install)
    • Our OS (current release)
      • Choose Disk (Clean Install)
      • Set Partitions (Custom Install)
    • Our OS (previous release)
      • Choose Disk (Clean Install)
      • Set Partitions (Custom Install)
    • Other OS
      • Choose Disk (Clean Install)
      • Set Partitions (Custom Install)
      • Dual Boot
    • Multiple OSes
      • Choose Disk (Clean Install)
      • Set Partitions (Custom Install)
      • Choose Partition (if replace/upgrade/refresh existing OS)
      • Installation Progress (if only one disk)
  • Installation Progress

Scary (but hopefully accurate) chart

Flow chart

The Installer is undergoing heavy design and development, so things might change!

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