"reuse" automatic partitioning option should not be branded as "Upgrade"

[Colin Watson]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

The "reuse" automatic partitioning option (which is intended to use an existing partition, remove all previous system files from it but preserve user data, and install into the resulting filesystem) is branded as follows in Ubiquity:

_Description: Upgrade ${CURDISTRO} to ${VER}
 No files will be deleted. Installed software will be kept where possible.

"No files will be deleted" isn't reliably true. apt-clone is an excellent idea, and it looks as though it does a very good job of saving and restoring customisations to files owned by packages. However, not all system files are owned by packages. For example, a user might well have followed instructions found on the internet (or, for more knowledgeable users, derived themselves) that involved adding a blacklist file to /etc/modprobe.d/ so that a particular kernel module won't be loaded, since they know that it's broken on their system. They might have installed software by hand using traditional './configure && make && sudo make install' style methods, rather than using a .deb. Despite our best intentions, these kinds of files will be deleted by this option.

There is a broader issue. I realise that we're trying to hitch a ride on the "upgrade" term in Ubiquity because it's something that many users who insert an Ubuntu CD want to do, and there is a contingent of users who don't trust update-manager upgrades for one reason or another whom we're trying to appeal to here. However, there is also a large contingent of users whom we have taught that an upgrade is something that upgrades to new versions of software, quite possibly changes their desktop around in significant ways, but leaves local customisations in place unless there's a really, really good reason not to. This "upgrade" option has a different emphasis: it tries to preserve local customisations, but it can only preserve the ones it explicitly knows about. I'm very worried that we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot by implying that this has particular kinds of safety when it doesn't.

I think we should brand this option differently (and yes, I know we're past UI freeze, but I've just finished talking with a user who lost data after using this option, and I really don't want to have a conversation like that after release). How about something like this? It probably needs work, but I would prefer this general emphasis.

_Description: Install in place of ${CURDISTRO}, preserving user files
 Documents, photos, music, and other files in your home folder will be kept, as well as installed software packages where possible. If you have made significant customisations to your system, you should make sure to take a backup copy first.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

After discussion, we've settled on the solution in bug 752372, so I'll mark this as a duplicate of that.