Debian text based installer getting the boot

I am the last one to turn down a nice GUI interface if it does the job better, but, this thing does exactly what the text installer does, so my question is 'what is the purpose of this exercise?'... Is this just to present a nice font/image of the Debian logo on each page?

jimf, that's a good question. A well-designed text interface doesn't need to be all tarted up, and making it into shiny pretty GUI does not automatically improve it. And I believe that all of the distros that have GUI installers also have text installers as a fallback, because the last place you want to introduce too many complications is during installation of an OS.

I suppose there are lots of folks who prefer a GUI installer, and that's OK. I just don't see the point.

You guys...

What could be more wonderful than GUI? A little marshmallow, a little caramel.

Sounds wonderful to me.

Why you'd pour it over Debian is a bit confounding. Ice cream is so much better.

I believe the title is misleading. The graphical front-end will always be just that: a front-end. The curses-based front-end won't go anywhere, especially if you know the way the Debian installer works. It's just a modular and scriptable piece of software, to which it is easy to add front-ends of all kinds.

Moreover, Debian supports hardware configuration which make such a GTK-based installer impossible to run. For those at least, the curses-based installer is here to stay (and I find it personally graphical enough as it is ;) ).

No, this graphical installer is just Debian giving in to all the people that believe that a piece of software can be easy to use only if one can use the mouse with it. So in a way it is indeed just GUI for the sake of GUI.

But hey, if it makes more people install Debian who wouldn't have given it a try otherwise, I'm all for it! It's just an alternative anyway! :)

A pleasant GUI is a lot more user friendly and appealing (or appear to be) to newbies and average users than text based. Every distro should have it. The best are the ones that do the install after a LiveCD boot and use Synaptic for application installation and upgrades. Servers and preferences are different stories. I like Knoppix, PCLinuxOS, Mepis, and I also like Suse and Mandriva. If it can be made easier for the majority without leaving out the minority, why not?

I say GUI is best.

For me its both now hows that for sitting on the fence!

Although i think its a purely psychcological thing i like to see a nice gui when installing on my desktop and i can even play solitaire, majhongg and such as i wait for PCLinuxOs to install on my desktop, eye candy on my desktop is the name of the game and makes me feel superior to windows users, then i slide on over to the Slackware box running the home server god forbid that goes down and her indoors can't access all the xfiles fan fiction, american idle videos i mean what happened to good old honest porn but i digress, the Slack curses install gives me this feeling that im dealing with an honest to god rock solid OS that will be your best friend and never let you down.

Totally silly if you think about it, as they are more or less still linux under the hood but hey still makes me feel good in different ways.