I really like ams' ideas.

>> Use GNU now -- Just boot into the LiveCD.

I think it would be important to have a fully featured LiveCD to play with for those wishing to play with the system before installing it--also, for some this could serve as a diagnostic and recovery tool.  For the LiveCD, I think it would be nifty if we could make it possible to have X on there too.

>> If this was in X, I think the there could be a pretty little menu on the left side that is a tree, where you more or less get the above.

I think it would be best to keep it simple as possible at first and to only have an ncurses installer.  Perhaps at a later time we could offer the option of an X installer.

It would be fantastic if we had a very simple-worded and straight forward installer that even a monkey could use.  Of course, I'm in support of having a more customized advanced option for installation.

Further, though more design-oriented, I think it would be nifty if we made the installer scriptable, per ams' idea.  I mean, have some sort of script file that could be used for any installer; this way we don't need to have the installation functions changed in the installer source.  Moreover, if we ever go for an X installer, we would not have to make functionality changes to both the X and ncurses installers.

So, these are my thoughts.  What does everyone else think?

I have a idea to the 'GNU System Installer'

1. Loads the cd and open Grub
   § Here the user will find some boot options like we have on GNU+Linux systems.

2. Booting Hurd (task #4484)

3. The 'Installer Manager' will be runned by the init scripts
   § It will be a program that reads from a guile conf what modules and in what sequence they will be runned.
   § This group of modules + the 'Intaller Manager' will be the 'GNU System Installer'
   § My idea is create modules that are 100% independent of the others, but, if necessary, we could use some System Variables to pass some information.

4. The 'Wellcome Module'
   a) The user will have a list of supported locales
   b) The user will have a list of keyboards (does hurd support more than 1 keymap)
   c) A wellcome message

5. The 'Partition Module'
   a) Give some information to the user about partitioning
   b) A GOOD frontend to GNU Parted, with options like "Auto Partition", that will use the free space of the HD to create the hurd partitions.
   c) A screen where people will format their partitions

6. The 'Basesystem Installer Module'
   a) Now, users will decide what partition will be '/', what partition will be '/home'... The module can suggest what partition will be used to '/' and 'swap', for example.
   b) Uncompress the Base
   c) Uncompress basic packages and install them (task #4491)

7. The 'Configure Module'
   a) Configure ´fstab´
   b) Change root password
   c) Configure some translators
   d) Configure GRUB
   e) ...

8. The 'Goodbye Module'
   a) A good bye message
   b) open the CD device
   c) reboot the system.