Ubiquity improvement

[swdw]

Been trying distros before settling on Mint. If it hadn't been for the option to manually set up Partitions, Sabayon would have been the one I'd have gone too.

Why?- Ubiquity. Using it with the ubuntu trial and mint, it needs some major work. It would be nice if you'd make a Mint improved version for your OS.

Here's why. My system has 3 internal drives and 2 external drives.
2 320GB drives with over 60GB of free space EACH, one of which also has a 30GB unassigned/unformatted partition
1 1.5 TB drive with 1.1 TB of free space

A 250gb external usb drive with 60gb of free space
A 1.0TB external USB drive with 700GB of free space.

Ubiquity fnished it's scanning and decision making when I chose install alongside windows, and guess which drive it chose? The 250GB external usb HD.

What in the ??????

It has all that space on the internal drives, and an unused partition . . . and it chooses an USB drive to install too????

Seems the decision making process in Ubiquity is fouled up. Shouldn't fixed internal hard drives take priority over any detachable external drives?

[ThistleWeb]

Not saying you don't have a point, but if you (like me) have specific ways you want your multiboot installs to be, then why not choose the manual option and choose for yourself? I always do manual partitioning, even in a single install OS.

[Aging Technogeek]

ThistleWeb,

+1

I always manually partition. I guess it is a reaction to not having this freedom in Windows. Also, I like my partitions as small as possible and in a specific sequence that I have found to be fastest on my systems.

swdw,

It could be that the installer is not designed to handle so many drives, especially when more than one is external. I do not have as many drives as you do, normally just two 1 TB internals and a 320 GB external, but I always disconnect the external drive when doing an OS installation to avoid accidentally overwriting any of the stuff I have stored on it, plus (as I say above) I always set partitions manually, so your problem has never occurred for me.

[swdw]

I did manually go in and select / create the partitions I needed. I tried the install alongside windows first to see what it would do.

My thoughts were, " Wonder what would happen if I chose the default if I wasn't computer savvy?" So I gave it a try.

Made me glad for the days I was running a dual boot when all the linux installers were text based and I was forced to learn about the Linux file system.

[sunewbie]

While i agree with @swdw to make Ubiquity more smarter or offer more options, I think most end users have one or at the most 2 internal drives. It would end somewhere in between the manual and auto partition.

+1 ThistleWeb, Aging Technogeek

I also prefer manual install. Virtualbox comes to the rescue. While Ubiquity is easier choice than manual partition for new comers, after you are socked in Linux culture, you will not be satisfied with one version of one distro for a decade. To add to it, Linux does not have a repair function like XP. I made a mess when I tried the same with Ubuntu 9.1 and I got 2 ubuntus . After that I have always opted for Manual partition.

Yesterday, I dual booted Mint 12 with XP inside virtualbox. I had earlier partitioned XP with 30 GB space. Now when I click on any machine XP or Mint 12, I have same GRUB menu. I found one problem thought about activating I/O, which I have yet to sort out.

I created another Guest OS Linux Mint 12 and selected XP HDD instead of creating a new one. Then went for manual partitioning and install. Finally I have one. Unfortunately, I forgot to take screen shots of manual partitioning and selecting swap from DD menu. Some find it difficult to spot it as it is under the file system and not listed in the mount point.

from End user stand point, while manual partitioning is comparatively difficult, a proper guide with screen shots can help reduce the difficulty level.

Perhaps, you should also post this at community as an idea. There are some people who login only at community. I do not remember exactly but there was an Idea regarding ubiquity.