Extremely bad user experience and proposed solutions

[V-Z]

Hello,
at SUSE Czech Open House I tried Agama to install upcoming Leap 16, and I failed miserably, my experience was basically devastating. I'll describe each point and propose solution.

• Hiding of the left menu on low resolution. One notebook had some issue with Intel graphics driver and showed only WXGA resolution, which resulted in collapse of the left menu into hamburger style known from web pages. I then completely lose orientation where I am. I think the issue is with that style resembling touch interface, which requires plenty of space. I remember installing Leap with traditional YaST on 1024x768 where everything is perfectly visible. So that I'd propose use more compact display and ensuring that the left menu with progress is always visible.
• Illogical ordering of the progress in the left bar. Situation where I select e.g. Leap and I'm send directly to the last page (Overview) in the installer which is first in the black menu. This is extremely confusing. I'd expect to go page by page with and end up on last page. Or to have this menu as horizontal, which would also solve the previous issue.
• Failure to install KDE. I do understand that You do not wish to prioritize either KDE or GNOME, but situation when I'm not warned that I haven't select any DE and end up just with command line is not acceptable for usage by ordinary user. I'd suggest to add warning when DE is not selected. For the second trial, finding where to check KDE wasn't convenient either. Might be also separate tab for DE?
• Unclear what to do to start the install. OK, I'm on the Overview tab, I don't see any Install button and I have no idea what to do. Yellow exclamation mark in top-left corner is not very intuitive, jumping among tabs is very confusing. I'd suggest block with warning on the top with list of issues and links how to fix them.
• No options at all in the Storage section. This was the biggest disappointment for me. Extremely low amount of options what to do, no way to get into any advanced config. Just... Why? In the old YaST installer I can keep recommended defaults and proceed with single click, or I can go to advanced partitioner and do whatever I need, resize partitions, create LVM, RAID, etc. And now? Nothing. Or to switch to terminal and run parted or so. Sorry, but this is huge drawback. Please, keep some option to perform advanced disk layout.

I understand that You wish to have the install KISS (I also like the idea to have single universal installer for everything), but this is not intuitive, neither simple. I was recently installing Ubuntu on one work machine and I was very upset by that crappy installer, and a lot of manual work I had to later do to get desired disk layout, but I'm sorry, it's much better than Agama now. I'm very sorry for very critical evaluation, but I have been using openSUSE since ca. version 10.1 (and Linux even longer), and I see this as huge loss of functionality without appropriate replacement.

[goguda]

Hm, I've been using openSUSE (SUSE) since 10.1 as well and just tried the Leap 16.0 alpha installer. I honestly think it's an improvement, but there are definitely still bugs/features that need some work before it's ready for release.

I do think a lot of your criticisms are valid.

For example, I find it kind of strange there's no sort of "Next" and "Back" to guide you through the installer. If you look at literally any other OS, Linux distro, the old installer, macOS or Windows, they all feature "Next" and "Back" buttons to guide the user through. Users expect that and it feels sort of chaotic without.

Without any sort of next/back, there's also no indication in the sidebar to see which page of options have already been viewed and configured by the user. There should should be checkmarks in the sidebar like the old installer.

I also think on smaller devices like you were experiencing, it would make more sense to show just the icons (with respective checkmarks), with the hamburger (or clicking on the semi-collapsed sidebar) expanding them into labels if the user wants to see more.

I think "Desktop Environment" should be its own option in the sidebar, or separated into a separate UI card on the software page, with a menu of options similar to the old installer. There should also be "Terminal" as an option to make it clear when there will be no GUI. I also found it weird I had to check it off through the Software page under Graphical Environments, not intuitive at all:

The overview page should probably be last. This would also make sense after the user has clicked next through all the screens, and then it would make sense having the Install button on the last page. I actually really like the simplified summary.

Personally, I think the storage section is great! Perhaps you didn't see it, because it took me a minute to notice it, but there's a small triangle to get more options (this could definitely be made more clear, maybe an "Edit" button):

Once I figured that out, I actually really like the new options to edit the partition layout:

I was a huge fan of the old partition editor as well (since most distributions don't offer anything like it), but this feels so much faster and easier to use. It was so easy to edit the size of the swap partition in the new editor, which I always found a bit cumbersome in the old partition editor. It's also nice you can see everything on one screen.

The installer is very different, and will take some getting used to. But it does feel a lot less intimidating and more modern than the old installer in my opinion. I think overall this may help new openSUSE/SUSE users feel more comfortable adopting. It's also nice that you can access it from a web browser on your LAN.

I think we also have to keep in mind that this isn't being used in production software yet, so there should be a lot of good improvements before it's fully released.