I am NOT a developer nor am I a distro builder. I am an implementer and user of technology for practical purposes.
Having been associated with Unix-Linux (and a host of other OSes) over my years, I quickly "got" (meaning "understood") what Shinobar was offering us when I first saw it. FirstRUN.
Linux has added and moved to X from its beginning with text base, There are 4 things that traditionally plague all users over the planet:
LAN, localization, sound, and video.
In the past, users were forced to stop along the way in answering boot-time questions about these things. And, if you got it wrong, you had to search the system for some tool to fix that (probably easy for system developers), or you started all over.
Shinobar fixed this. For the first time, he gave all distro owners a method to allow any user the opportunity to select and change these basis needs in a single screen "FirstRUN" after reaching desktop without having to stop at various times along the way.. He made it so that you no longer had to stop and answer questions just to get to the X desktop. This was a major and "startling" change in booting of today's OS. Just insert CD and go straight to X! FirstRUN completes the tailoring in one place and user begin the system, immediately.
Since the outset, that single screen has had a name change across most distro which employ it now as "Personalize Settings"
For example when this invokes to the desktop, a user knows
- sound works, when they hear "woof-woof"
- the name of the PC and They can set it for their needs
- Time zone needs
- keyboard needs
- Video options for various needs
- And, it even checks you LAN connections for you and alerts you it there's a miscue.
- iff there is a "screw up", one can simply go back thru that single screen again for adjustments.
This tools has done so much for us in a single screen. Many of us have used this for various good reasons.
As we approach 2012, Barry is also moving to improve the user experience at boot time.
Barry raises a good point as he is looking at improving the startup desktop processing for Woof, WARY and RACY. This effects an advantage to distro builders as improvements can be made to process the startup/reset of the system experience in a single "friendly" intuitive screen.
The development of the FirstRUN tool, as it exist today, is a combination of its start, along with 'the ideas and offers' that other Puppy distro developers had already filtered into Shinobar. He has been responsive to this.
He has produced a very useful tool for some, but, I have not heard anything negative about its services to Puppy thus far. Thus one would assume it provide a positive experience from the distro developers who employ it to the users who use.
Is there any ideas or suggestions that anyone feels would improve the startup desktop experience in this single screen approach?
P.S. FATDOG can take a user to desktop, but, FATDOG does NOT provide a single screen for changing anything done by the FATDOG boot process.
Whereas, FirstRUN give any distro owner the advantage of a single screen where the user can either undo or correct what was initially booted. This is what makes FirstRUN so powerful.
Question, again
Is there any ideas or suggestions that anyone feels would improve the startup desktop experience in this "single screen approach"? I'm sure everyone would welcome any and all suggestions to support Barry in his efforts.
Old version - FirstRUN 1.84
New Version - FirstRUN 1.9