Fedora's New Web-Based Installer UI Is Shaping Up Nicely

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora's New Web-Based Installer UI Is Shaping Up Nicely

Red Hat engineers have been working on a new web-based user-interface for Fedora's installer for more than on year now and it's been worked into good shape while still not at feature parity to the Anaconda installer with its GTK interface. Martin Kolman presented at FOSDEM last weekend on Fedora's new installer UI to offer insight into their motives for making it web-based and what work remains...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Web-UI-Installer-2023

[avis]

With GTK3 WebKit it's smaller and with less RAM usage but worse performance and no acceleration

HW acceleration on installation media is a recipe for disaster. Installation media should be 100% robust and work in the future no matter what HW capabilities are present.

Also you absolutely don't want HW acceleration when HW drivers are buggy, or when the implementation itself is buggy.

[avis]

How does it actually work?

Python backend <-> DBus <-> Cockpit <-> React.js/PatternFly

Woah. This looks extremely robust and will absolutely never fail. Does it also require 8GB of RAM and 8 core CPU?

Speaking of "insecure VNC" and "Secure remote access via a web browser" - I don't understand how the latter is supposed to work considering most likely a use of a self-signed SSL certificate, so all bets are off because it won't be easy or will be impossible to spot a MITM attack.

[SpyroRyder]

Why is the "next" button still on the far left? Even if its not top left hand corner like in the current installer its still not great to have the buttton positions like they do. Back and quit on the left, next on the right as that is the ltr direction. Reversed for rtl languages of course.

[avis]

Why is the "next" button still on the far left? Even if its not top left hand corner like in the current installer its still not great to have the buttton positions like they do. Back and quit on the left, next on the right as that is the ltr direction. Reversed for rtl languages of course.

Reversed by enlightened GTK designers. >= GTK3 dialogs (e.g. file open/save) continue to stumble me every time I see them.

[Danny3]

WTF, why?
Why not using Calamares?

[Linuxhippy]

Why is the "next" button still on the far left? Even if its not top left hand corner like in the current installer its still not great to have the buttton positions like they do. Back and quit on the left, next on the right as that is the ltr direction. Reversed for rtl languages of course.

Reversed by enlightened GTK designers. >= GTK3 dialogs (e.g. file open/save) continue to stumble me every time I see them.

It is actually sad that I feel glad to not be the only one who thinks these design decisions are absolutly crazy. I don't want to know how many desktop users have actually been scared away by those gtk/gnome UI decisions. Sure there are more sane alternatives, but the average user will end-up with gnome at first, and before he learns there are more conventional options he is back using his known explorer.exe shell.

[caligula]

Woah. This looks extremely robust and will absolutely never fail. Does it also require 8GB of RAM and 8 core CPU?

Python is a strongly typed language and dbus also has strong namespace guarantees for delivery. Python installers rarely fail. E.g. Arch also uses Python

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tst3Q7FDRK4D0iRPXksOiePKicny7Guz/view

[stan]

the average user will end-up with gnome at first, and before he learns there are more conventional options he is back using his known explorer.exe shell.

It’s almost as if they have M$FT saboteaurs high up in the GNOME leadership or the leadership of its main sponsor (RedHat) who direct the desktop development decisions in such a way as to reduce the appeal to end users, while at the same time keeping plausible deniability and the excuse of incompetence. It wouldn’t be the first time (case in point, Miguel de Icaza)

[ll1025]

Woah. This looks extremely robust and will absolutely never fail. Does it also require 8GB of RAM and 8 core CPU?

Speaking of "insecure VNC" and "Secure remote access via a web browser" - I don't understand how the latter is supposed to work considering most likely a use of a self-signed SSL certificate, so all bets are off because it won't be easy or will be impossible to spot a MITM attack.

How is this different than SSH on first connect? "Do you trust this thumbprint".

No, it's not really secure but that doesn't seem to be an issue for most people using SSH either.