Strangely worded resize question

[Daniel Burrows]

When asking about the new size of a partition, the installer says that
percentages are interpreted as fractions of the "free space". I think it means
fractions of the size of the partition.

[Adrien Cordonnier (adrien-cordonnier)]

It has been a while since I last installed Ubuntu while keeping a Windows partition. Yet I can confirm the partition questions were strangely worded. For example, the installer asked for "New partition size" and maybe because I'm not a native English speaker but I had no idea if it meant "Size of the new partition (the new partition created for Linux)" or "New size of the partition (the resized Windows partition)".

[pfaffman (pfaffman)]

It is confusing. I've tried it at least twice, once in front of a class of about 15 teacher educators and no one could figure out what size the Edubuntu partition would be. On the laptop that I'm using now Ubuntu 7.04beta is on a 13 MB partition while the yet-to-be-booted XP partition has >60MB. It's not supposed to be that way.

Please change the language so that instead of "free space" it says something like use XXX MB for Ubuntu. It's a quick fix and, though I pretty much quit using Windows 10 years ago, for most people, the ease of re-sizing a windows partition and installing Ubuntu is really important until bug #1 is resolved.

[Jason Woofenden (jason210)]

"new partition size" is a total ambiguity. I didn't see the ambiguity until reading this bug report. I just took it to mean "size of the new partition" and was pissed when it resized the old partition to that size, not the new one.

Please label it:

"Resize old partition to:" or "New size for old partition:" or something. "existing" works inplace of "old" if that sounds better.

I hope this is made a high priority.

[randomwalker (randomwalker)]

OMG please fix this! I just installed gutsy, interpreted the "new partition sizse" slider like everybody else, got the size wrong, and frustrated after logging in to my new install. I came here to report this bug and found it's been reported a long time ago. It's a simple wording change!

[alterebro (alterebro)]

It's very confusing indeed, this would have to be high priority for the next Ubuntu release as it should be totally clear, more when it comes up on the partitioning process which is the more frightening part for newbie users.

Something similar to what Jason Woofenden suggests like: "New size for existing partition" would be definetly more accurate and intuitive.

[muttnik (muttnik-sputnik)]

This problem still exists in the 9.10 installer. Every time I use the installer I need to look up exactly what is meant by "New Partition Size".

"New size for existing partition" as mentioned above would be an improvement. Better yet would be some indication of exactly which partition was being resized. For example "New size for existing partition on /dev/sda3".

[rusivi2 (rusivi2-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for reporting this bug.

Does this occur in Maverick?

[pfaffman (pfaffman)]

I think it's fixed in Lucid, at least in teh graphical install. I
think that language in the text-only installer may be less confusing
now.

Jay Pfaffman <email address hidden>
http://learn.occ.utk.edu/
[phone]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 6:02 PM, rusivi1 <email address hidden> wrote:
> Thank you for reporting this bug.
>
> Does this occur in Maverick?
>
> ** Changed in: partman-partitioning (Ubuntu)
>       Status: Confirmed => Incomplete
>
> --
> Strangely worded resize question
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/24867
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
>