Direction setting based on the installation and bootup process

This document looks at the whole Linux installation and bootup process with these main sections:

The bootup and installation process are very visual and give a user the first impression of the level of localisation in their software. If we can give them a good impression with less work then it becomes easier to create a fully translated Linux distribution.

The idea is to layout the dependencies and try place translatable components in some relative order in the process. This is done so that we for instance can place the language locale file at the correct point in the bootup process. And thus at the correct point at which it becomes important to a localisation project.

FIXME This document is based on Fedora but probably applies to any Linux distribution.

Installation

Stage Messages Description
CD boot messages (unknown)  
rhpl 134 lists mice keyboards and exceptions might be needed in bootup as it mentions failed mouse detection and not being able to do graphical install
Comps 158 package groups and some descriptions used by anaconda I presume
Anaconda installer 1473  
Anaconda online help 263  
Firstboot 73  

Booting

Stage Messages Description
Grub ? not sure how to localise (localisation not implemented only scheduled post 1.0 release)
kernel   The Linux kernel messages are localisable
Locale files ? needed by some initscripts to display date
Initscripts 29 only ‘sysinit’ and some ‘init.d/funtions’
rhgb 29  
Kudzu 70  

END OF BOOT PROCESS the next stage depends on the run level, most end-users will never see run level 3

Init 3

Stage Messages Description
/bin/login   found in util-linux – should try and extract only /bin/login strings

Init 5

Stage Messages Description
GDM 695 lots of bumf but hard to separate it out
Wallpaper    
Fedora 5 artwork

Post Booting

The booting process will take a computer to the place where the user is required to login. This section looks at what items are seen just after the user logs in.

Init 5

  • Wallpaper (if different from login wallpaper)
  • Fedora – menu’s
  • GNOME / KDE
    • Kicker
    • K Menu bar general
    • Clock
    • Desktop

Init 3

  • /etc/issue not really possible to change easily

Config Tools

Once logged in a user will interact with the standard Free and Open Source applications that are usually localised outside of the distribution community. However each distribution has its own set of configuration tools that need localisation.

FIXME Create some category of which configuration tools are more important to localise then others.

On Fedora all the user centric and hardware related system-config tools constiture 7691 words of translation.