[OpenIndiana-discuss] Rolling release considered harmful

[Reginald Beardsley]

I just finished running the graphic installer on 2020.10.31 and 2021.04.30 ISOs.  It would be an understatement to say the results were not good.

1) The documentation mentioned on the first screen is missing as noted previously

2) The release notes button produces a "unable to display release notes" dialog.

I selected "whole disk install" and took all the defaults. After the install completed I rebooted using the GUI installer.

3) The system reported "Non-system disk or disk error" with both releases.

I am pleased to report that a default text install did properly configure the nVIDIA driver in 2021.04.30.  

I don't know when the GUI installer stopped installing the bootloader.  While I could check 2017.10  and 2015.10, there's really no point. Git should tell the tale for anyone interested.  My concern is not who broke it, but that it is being released broken.

The real issue is that releases are not being tested for even basic functionality.  We really should be testing for device driver issues, but first we need to get to first base.

Someone coming to OI from Linux would quite naturally choose the GUI installer.  I shall leave the reader to ponder their likely reaction to "Non-system disk or disk error".  I suspect most would simply abandon OI entirely.   Not because they couldn't make it work, but because the distribution image is so unprofessional as to be embarrassing.

OI *could* make most, if not all, of the Linux distros I've tested look bad.  Sadly the current status is the opposite.  The worst Linux distro I've tested makes OI look bad.

So the overarching question is this:  What is the community going to do about it?

Reg