< Changes
Fedora Media Writer as Primary Downloadable
Summary
The new Fedora Media Writer that is being finished has an overhauled, more user friendly interface. Because USB sticks are the most common way to install Fedora, it should be the primary download option. It cover the whole installation media creation, it lets the user pick the right flavor of Fedora, downloads its image, and copies it to a USB drive.
This Change inherits the LiveUSBCreator change. Fedora Media Writer is a rewrite of the current liveusb-creator package in C++, using most of the functional parts of the old project and its complete user interface.
Owner
- Name: Martin Briza, Jiri Eischmann
- Email: mbriza redhat com, eischmann redhat com
- Release notes owner:
Current status
Detailed Description
Fedora Media Writer is a new tool that be much easier to use than the existing tools (see mockups). It should cover the complete work flow of creating an installation media. It provides information (descriptions, screenshots,...) about flavors and variants of Fedora to help the user to pick the right one for their usage, downloads the ISO, and copies it to a USB flash disk. The goal of this change is to provide this tool as the primary download option on getfedora.org and create a mechanism to store and update information (descriptions, screenshots,...) for the tool. This requires work not only from the change owners, but also from other groups (websites, design, marketing, releng teams).
Benefit to Fedora
It will provide an easy-to-use tool for all major platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X) which will be offered to users as the primary download option. That should generally lower the barrier for potential users to try and install Fedora.
Scope
- Proposal owners:
- Fedora Media Writer for Linux (Copr and Flatpak coming soon, should we create a deb package, too?)
- Fedora Media Writer for Windows
- Fedora Media Writer for Mac OS X
- Other developers: the websites team has to update the download page to make FMW the primary download option.
- Marketing and design:
- the design team has to work with websites team on necessary changes to the download page.
- the marketing has to provide information for FMW including descriptions and screenshots (screenshots of Workstation are currently missing)
- QA:
- adjust tests and test result matrices
- Release engineering:
- Plan the process of building Windows and MacOS packages
- Handle the distribution of the releases
- (Probably) estabilish a way how to pass Fedora release data to the tool - related to the release information from Marketing
- Policies and guidelines:
The Media Writer tool is helping with new installations. Existing installations are not affected.
- Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
Upgrade/compatibility impact
The Media Writer tool is helping with new installations. Existing installations are not affected.
How To Test
- Go to getfedora.org
- Go for the default download option
- Download it
- Use the tool on {Fedora, Windows, OS X} to create a live USB using the F24 or F25 workstation
- Verify that the created live USB works
- Also try creating live USBs with some of the other available images
User Experience
Hopefully this change will improve user experience of trying and installing Fedora a lot.
Dependencies
No dependecies.
Contingency Plan
- Contingency mechanism: if Fedora Media Writer is not ready to be the primary download option, it can only be mentioned on the download website as a tool to create a live USB stick. If the new FMW is not ready at all to replace the old version, we can still keep linking the old version or alternative tools.
- Contingency deadline: beta freeze
- Blocks release? Yes, it will be such a visible change that it should block a release if it's not ready.
- Blocks product? All
Documentation
How_to_create_and_use_Live_USB should be updated.
TBD
Repo: Github