Comment 40 for bug 1265192

Revision history for this message
Chris Bainbridge (chris-bainbridge) wrote : Re: Reinstallation wipes out all/other partitions

R.C. Primak (bobprimak)
> What is really needed, is for anyone attempting to install Ubuntu to find on some prominently labeled Web Page

The problem is that people won't find or read the web page. All it would take to fix this issue for the vast majority of new users is a final popup confirmation box that says:

    This operation will DESTROY existing data!

        Windows C: drive with 200GB of data will be DELETED
        Windows D: drive with 150GB of data will be DELETED

     Are you really sure you want to do this? Type YES in capitals to confirm.

The advantage of a "final check" is that it would also catch people who just do not realise that they are about to delete their Windows partitions - like this guy 2 days ago: http://askubuntu.com/questions/482785/installed-over-windows-8-partition or this girl 5 days ago: http://askubuntu.com/questions/481065/accidentally-deleted-windows-partition-when-trying-to-install-ubuntu

Windows may have the same problem with their installers, but Ubuntu is in a slightly different situation, in that Ubuntu users more often want to install and dual-boot with their existing OS, whereas most users re-installing Windows will want it to the the sole OS. The Ubuntu project encourages people to download and install Ubuntu, whereas Microsoft encourages new users to buy a PC with Windows pre-installed. So Ubuntu ends up with a higher percentage of new users trying to do a dual-boot install, and so needs to be more careful with deleting data.

As pointed out above, it is odd that not adding a swap partition results in a warning and confirm dialog, but installing over a Windows partition full of data is fine...