Downix: A reminder, this is not the end, it is still but the beginning. A first public beta.
Indeed. I know I'm nitpicking, here, but the documentation is definately not HTML compliant and has more than a few parsing errors. It's good form for any IT company to produce clean HTML, especially for documentation. I always seem to need a Windows box to read Linux install documentation. ;-)
The rest of the installation seems OK, given that it's a developer release. I'd be very surprised if the final has the same procedure.
Neko: What a beautiful firmware upgrade procedure they have 
Ugh. Please tell me this is because of the "beta" nature of the OS. I mean, what the hell is the "ide reset" command doing in there? I haven't seen firmware like that since my OS/2 days.
MikeyMike: What firmware updates are notably "nice"?
I guess people still think BIOS updates are only for technically inclined geeks. Most people never update their firmware, which is why many companies do it automatically. Digital cameras, for example, will autoupdate their firmware. I had a couple people bring dead cameras to the store, only to find out the firmware was corrupt. When I try to fix them, it amazes me how horrible the update utilities are, and what terrible directions the companies provide. No wonder people screw it up. Contrary to popular belief, users are not complete idiots. I really feel bad for people who don't know anything about computers. Not a lot of progress has been made in the last 20 years, relatively speaking.
On Windows it is extremely rare to have a firmware update procedure that doesn't involve booting into DOS/a DOS disk. I don't know if Macs even "do firmware updates".
It never ceases to amaze me how horrible BIOS updates are on the PC. Booting into DOS isn't the most difficult thing to do (unless you have a Win2K/XP CD, which doesn't boot to a prompt directly), but it is totally rediculous. Why can't they just make a boot disk for you? You always have to make your own boot disk and type in everything to start the flash program. My dad just updated a BIOS on a friend's ASUS board, and the flashing utility didn't even use proper syntax at the command line. There was no space between the flash switch and the ROM filename! I thought it was just a typo in the manual. :-?
My dad owns an ABit board, and the flash updater that runs within Windows isn't too bad. You do have to "install" the flash utility and reboot, though, because it has to be installed as a kernel driver to work. It still makes me nervous to run the utility, especially since it downloads the BIOS right off the Internet and flashes it imediately without making a backup, first. At least it asks for confirmation, first!
Macs have transparrent BIOS updates. If you install MacOS9 on a pre-9 Mac, it will update the BIOS automatically. I found that out the hard way . I was wondering why our old Mac suddenly took four times longer to get through hardware checks, and the entrance screen suddenly looked different. :-)
Then again, I've seen far, far worse BIOS patches. I had to update an old Compaq, once, and the BIOS had a complete GUI designed to look like Windows 3.0, but worked ten times worse. All the options basicly boiled down to, "Windows (auto) / Unix (hardware offset)". Took me about an hour to replace the sickly, original hard drive with a "modern" three giger. I forgot how long the actual BIOS update took. I had no documentation, so it was almost an all-night project.
