RFE: instead of being greyed out, ntfs etc. should prompt to install package

[Aaron Whitehouse]

Binary package hint: gparted

I am using Karmic Mythbuntu.

I like that Ubuntu doesn't automatically install ntfsprogs etc. with GParted. I think that the current approach is unintuitive, however. I wanted to format a partition ntfs and it was in the list, but greyed out. I was not sure whether this was because I had the wrong combination of logical/extended or had done something else inconsistent. When I Googled it, I realised that it was because I needed to install ntfsprogs and then all worked as expected.

What should happen, in my opinion, is something like the GStreamer approach, where it lets you select it, warns you (if necessary, say for exFAT that may have patent issues) and then installs the package for you.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Dec 19 16:12:59 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Mythbuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
Package: gparted 0.4.5-2ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_NZ.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.53-generic
SourcePackage: gparted
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic x86_64

[Dave Walker (dogatemycomputer)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 334170, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Conrad Knauer (atheoi)]

This is not quite a duplicate of Bug #334170; I would describe this as a whishlist bug for "something like the GStreamer approach, where it lets you select it, warns you (if necessary, say for exFAT that may have patent issues) and then installs the package for you."

I wonder if there is maybe not another bug or spec somewhere that is a superset of this; archive manager would also do well to offer to install certain packages. I leave it to others to think about this...

[Jan Claeys (janc)]

I agree that this not a duplicate of bug #334170, which is a packaging bug (I removed the duplicate status).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.