stronger warning when using automatic partitioning
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ubiquity (Ubuntu) |
Triaged
|
High
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Hi all,
I'm Paul alias carroues from the French Ubuntu forum (ubuntu-fr.org).
Every week at least once or twice, I see messages from people - OK, usually newbies - saying "Help me, I installed Ubuntu and I can't find my personal stuff that was on my hard drive previously, you know, the book I am writing / photos of my new baby / the last photos of my father before he died / my thesis, 3 years of research ...
OK, I'm sure you have all seen this sort of message yourselves. 3 cases in one single topic here (en français, naturellement) : http://
In my experience, this problem usually arises from misuse of the automatic installation procedure. I know you that have to confirm before actually starting the procedure, but let's face it : when you are dealing with people coming essentially from Windows, used to automatic click-and-install procedures, you know that the vast majority have little or no understanding whatsoever of what they are really doing.
This unfortunately causes bad publicity for Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular.
I am sure that the problem could be avoided in most cases with a simple message, for example in red text and bold characters, saying something like : "Warning : this option will entirely delete your hard drive. Choose this only if you have no personal data and no previous operating system such as XP, Vista or MacOS which should be kept."
I'm sure that this is something which is really easy to "fix" !
Many thanks for your attention to this problem.
Paul / carroues
PS : I am sorry if I have not posted this to the right team : may I count on you to forward it if this is the case.
| Changed in ubiquity: | |
| importance: | Undecided → High |
| status: | New → Triaged |
| Alan Searchwell (searchie) wrote | #1 |
| Rodolfo Bonnin (bonninrodolfo) wrote | #2 |
This is my first contribution but as one who has benefited from all the fantastic work that goes on around here I feel that the least I can do is to try and offer something back.
There are basically four types of installation that users want to do:
1)Trial - user just wants to try and see how linux works when actually installed on thier hardware as opposed to the live CD but is not ready to use linux as their primary OS yet.
2)Migrate - user has decided to use linux as their primary OS but still has data in Windows and one or two Windows only applications that they still need for now.
3)Expert - user already has multiple partitions and OS's, multi-boots and knows pretty much exactly how they want things organized.
4)New Instalation - user has a disk that has nothing on it that is relevant to them and can wipe the whole disk without fear of losing anything.
The current default option is suitable for scenarios 1 and 2 even though, it would be a nice touch to have two options, one to shrink the existing partition with the most free space by just enough to fit a decent working installation of linux with a swap partition and the other a more aggressive resize, using more of the available space for the new linux installation. For the scenario 2, an option to create a home partition to accept imported "Documents and Settings" from Windows would be a nice touch.
If these scenarios used AVAILABLE space only it would als fix Bug #287547. If there is not enough space a message should be displayed saying "Not enough space available to carry out this action. Please return to you other OS(s) and delete some files. space available XGB, space required XGB"
The expert option should be accompanied by a warning that mistakes can result in lost data or the inability to boot into one or more of the installed operating systems.
The option to completely wipe all existing installations off the disk, scenario 4, should be last and like Paul says, should be accompanied by a severe warning and chance to abort.