guided partitioning of multiple disks is confusing

[Benjamin Kay]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

Guided partitioning in ubiquity is confusing when multiple disks are involved. I first noticed the issue in Kubuntu's daily-live from March 3, which uses ubiquity 1.11.14, but it may have existed before that.

Consider attached screenshot 1 showing the partitioner running on a system with two hard disks (both of which have preexisting partitions) before the user has clicked on anything. Note that "Before Install" and "After Install" graphics are shown for both disks, even though ubiquity is only going to repartition one of the disks. This could confuse a novice user who doesn't know that Ubiquity is really only going to repartition the disk selected by the radio button.

Now consider attached screenshot 2, which shows what happens when the user selects the radio button for either disk. The graphics for the unselected disk are no longer drawn, which is ostensibly what screenshot 1 should have looked like. However the "Before Install" and "After Install" text is still drawn for the unselected disk. While this extra text isn't going to confuse many users, it doesn't look very pretty.

Finally, consider attached screenshot 3, which shows what happens when the user selects the "Install them side by side" radio button. The "Before Resize" and "After Resize" graphics and text are drawn only for one disk, which is ostensibly what screenshots 1 and 2 should have looked like. However it is always drawn for the first disk, regardless of which disk has been selected under "Use the entire disk". Which disk will be repartitioned -- the one that is being drawn, or the one that has been selected? At best, this is really confusing; at worst, the user has no way to tell the partitioner to do a "side by side" install on the second disk.

There are several ways of making this less confusing, but here's what I would recommend:
1. Make the selection of a disk independent from the selection of what to do with that disk. Have one place where the user selects a disk and a separate place where the user selects whether to use the entire disk or share it with another OS.
2. Always draw before and after graphics for all disks, but make them reflect what's actually going to happen during the install. The before and after graphics should look the same for the disks that haven't been selected. This will reassure the user that changes will not being made to those disks.

A couple of other usability issues I'm too lazy to file separate bug reports for:
1. Drawing graphics for multiple hard disks takes up a lot of vertical space, which is a problem on devices with limited screen resolution. It would be nice if those graphics were inside a vertical scroll pane.
2. The wording of "Install them side by side, choosing between them each startup" it somewhat awkward for the perspective of a novice user. Does "them" refer to a disk, a partition, or an operating system? What exactly does "startup" mean? Perhaps the wording could be changed to something more like: "Share the disk with existing operating systems, and choose which operating system to use when you turn on your computer."

[Evan (ev)]

Indeed, this should match the functionality in the GTK frontend and only show a single before bar and a single after bar.

[Benjamin Kay (benkay)]

This no longer seems to be an issue in Kubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) Beta 1, which features ubiquity 2.2.5.