Ubiquity - insufficient

[seeley]

Hi!
Preliminary note:
I bought my first computer in the middle of the eighties, testing all important operating systems. I made more than 100 installations, burned about 200 DVDs / CDs (only PCBSD and Linux); my current notebook is number 11. On the last ones I always installed Linux tripel boot (only Linux distributions - about 30 different ones).

Mint could be the best distro, but not with Ubiquity.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubiquity
Since years there are problems over problems - the "normal" user does not notice them. The main problem is the boot loader installation, if you do not choose MBR of the first hard disk.

The LMDE installer is much better (Summary!), but is buggy, too, if you decide during installation to go back and change e.g. location or keyboard, it happened, that the chosen boot loader target was not taken.

OpenSuse has the best installation program, followed by Calamares.

https://calamares.io/about/

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20141222
One of the most critical pieces of software in any operating system is the installer. After all, if the user cannot get the operating system to work it doesn't matter how great the distribution's features are. With this in mind, Manjaro Linux is showing off a new graphical system installer called Calamares. The Manjaro blog states, "By design [Calamares] is very customizable, in order to satisfy a wide variety of needs and use cases. Calamares aims to be easy, usable, beautiful, pragmatic, inclusive and distribution-agnostic. Got a Linux distribution but no system installer? Grab Calamares, mix and match any number of Calamares modules (or write your own in Python or C++), throw together some branding, package it up and you are read

http://distrowatch.gds.tuwien.ac.at/wee ... e=20150907
While I was playing with Manjaro a few details stood out and I'd like to briefly touch on them. One is that Manjaro has one of the most elegant and fast graphical system installers I have had the pleasure to use. The installer has a streamlined interface that still allows for a decent amount of customization. For example, we can select where to install our boot loader or even whether to install a boot loader using a drop-down box on the disk partitioning screen. Manjaro supports a wide variety of file systems and the installer can work with ext2/3/4, Reiserfs, XFS, JFS, Btrfs and LVM volumes. The whole installer looks a lot like Ubuntu's installer, but with a nicer colour scheme and Manjaro's installer is notably faster to respond to user input on my hardware. I think this is because Manjaro collects information from the user up front and then performs all of its work at the end, while Ubuntu's system installer begins work in the background while we are still making configuration choices.

Conclusion for Mint:
Trash ubiquity, for a transition time use the LMDE installer instead and join the Calamares team!

[Jerry]

It's important to recognize that anyone wanting to respond to some of your statements has to take into consideration that your statements are your opinion only. What might work for you does not imply that it works for someone else or to another distribution (i.e. installer, installation programs).
However, your opinion does merit some good points.

[seeley]

Hi!
Facts (1):
Looking back some years: You could have seen in 4 different forums, that
ubiquity established root partitions with a size less than 5 GB ("use whole disk") - not big enough for the next update (disk spaces always more than 60 GB!).

[Pjotr]

The last time that I encountered an important bug in Ubiquity, is more than five years ago.... I quite like Ubiquity: I find it fast, intuitive and easy to operate. In most cases, it gets the job done without problems.

[jimallyn]

I take it Ubiquity is the installer? I've done maybe 10 or 12 Mint installations, and never had any problems with it.

[seeley]

Hi!
Facts (2):
Ubiquity was destroying my carefully aligned SSD - about a year ago.
And as you could have read in several forums there were other people with ruined partitions.
And a senior sales manager showed me a notebook with Mint to sell with exactly the same problem.

[lauren]

Hi!
My first *Ubuntu and last Mint installation - what do they have in common?
Ubiquity did not install Grub2 on the chosen device:
*Ubuntu: /dev/sda instead of USB flash,
Mint 17.2: MicroSD card (!) instead of MBR /dev/sda.
I' m waiting for Mint 18, but there is no hope that Mint 18 will come with a fair installer.
Why not use the LMDE installer (much better and certain)?

I installed Manjaro with Calamares (less than 4 minutes) - the best of all.

[seeley]

Hi!
Fact 3:
MicroSD card problem confirmed: If you have inserted an adapter with card, the installer asks you, if you want to unmount the device. Yes or no -
no difference: the first displayed device and the Grub target is that device! Of course you can change that mistake, but why the question?
Fact 4:
Ubiquity was shrinking (!) my extended partition during installation of Mint 17.
What' s all this good for?

[DeMus]

I downloaded two versions of Manjaro this morning to try them in Virtualbox.
One: the KDE version.
I couldn't even get it to boot right. One time I managed to get a desktop, but as soon as the mouse came close to the lower panel it disappeared. I could however click on the bottom-left corner of the screen and open the menu. I found the Calamares installer and started it.
After 3 mouse-clicks it crashed.

Then I replaced the KDE iso with the XFCE iso which booted (and fast)
I started the Calamares installer and after 3 mouse-clicks it crashed. Not once, but every time I started it.
Manjaro also has another graphical installer but after booting this one I read the text it is beta software. It did manage to install the OS though.

Calamares, and to be honest all of Manjaro, is not a success in a VM.
Shame, I would like to have played with it for a while.

EDIT: I think I am having a problem in my system. I tried to install Sabayon (based on Gentoo, also with Calamares installer) and the same thing happened. Hope it is Virtualbox, easy to re-install and start over, if not it must be the host, Mint 17.2 KDE-64.

[seeley]

Hi!
My installations are real installations: on internal hd, SSD, external hd and SSD (once, years ago on MicroSD);
I installed 5 different Manjaros, all with Calamares - never a single problem.

But here we "talk" about Ubiquity, so:
Fact 5:
Ubiquity is not one of the fastest installers (I really tested - installed - all of Distrowatch' s Major Distributions and some more
(e.g. Fuduntu, SolusOS, Mandriva, ...).
And a very important point for newbies: An excellent installer gives you an overview / summary before writing changes to disk.
Does Ubiquity starts writing before all inputs are done
Where are you?
Keyboard layout
Who are you?
to save a few seconds (to be a little faster)? No rational reason!

[lauren]

Hi!
Manjaro only hat the installer Thus, afterwards Thus and you could download Calamares Beta on live medium and install with Calamares; next step:
choice between Thus and Calamares.
Why not offer both installers, LMDE installer and Ubiquity, in all Mint versions?

[seeley]

Hi!
Facts (6):
Most installers allow the choice to format or not format a swap partition - but Ubiquity even wants to format a swap partition of an internal hd / SSD - impractically. The UUID would be another one, that could end in problems (depends on distribution) as
- swap no longer activated
- boot problems.

Screen shot:

2xSwap.png

[Cosmo.]

Ubiquity even wants to format a swap partition of an internal hd / SSD - impractically. The UUID would be another one, that could end in problems (depends on distribution) as
- swap no longer activated
- boot problems.

I agree, if Ubiquity would format swap, this would lead into probelms because of the changed UUID. But this does not happen!

I have installed numerously computers with several Mint-versions and I have never seen this problem. If you were right, the problem would be there for all but the first system on the machine.

To be sure I made in a VM with a previously installed Mint guest a new installation and watched very carefully: Going "Something else" and clicking on the "Change" button, after selecting any of the existing partitions, does not even allow me to activate the format option (it is there, but grayed out). This is the case regardless if I do this with the partition that has been already swap before or with another (ext4) partition.

There is indeed a bug: In the summary dialog, which you showed, the swap partition gets listed as to get formatted. But in reality it does not. The bug is the wrong message regarding the swap partition.

I copied via GParted the UUID of the swap partition before and after the installation and compared them: No change at all! Consequently the problem you described does not exist.

[Cosmo.]

The main problem is the boot loader installation, if you do not choose MBR of the first hard disk.

I have no idea, what this means - and there is no detailled description what you encounter as the "main problem". I partition all my internal drives in a non-UEFI-device with GPT and this gave never a problem. A "main problem" should at least be visible, but all works as expected. The boot loader got installed where it mostly is expected to get installed (/dev/sda).

[seeley]

Hi!
1. I did not touch a swap partition during installation, thus a warning to format 2 swap partitions is a bug.
2.

...if you do not choose MBR of the first hard disk

that's a clear formulation; what are the other possibilities? MBR of another hd or PBR of a hd.

[BigEasy]

seeley, with whom you are talking here about subj? Well, I'm almost ready to switch to Calamares. What should I do? Your turn.

[Cosmo.]

I did not touch a swap partition during installation, thus a warning to format 2 swap partitions is a bug.

That is what I wrote above. The bug is the wrong message. But you wrote about a problem about formatting swap with a resulting changed UUID. This does not happen. As I described not even by will.

...if you do not choose MBR of the first hard disk

that's a clear formulation

It does not describe at least what "main bug" you have encountered, so the "main bug" is a absolutely unclear formulation. What does happen? What should happen? What does not happen? I see in numerous installations with no MBR-disk at all no bug.

[lauren]

Hi!
Very interesting:
http://linuxbsdos.com/2015/09/29/calama ... installer/

Back to Ubiquity:
There is a missing option: "do not install boot loader"; LMDE, Fedora, SolydXK,... allow it - a good idea for multi boot.
It is not possible to install Mint on a xfs root partition; of course you can arrange a boot partition, but after some kernel upgrades the latest one cannot be saved - you manually have to delete the old one(s); Fedora has a file, where you can determine how many kernels shall be kept, so no problem. I don' t know how Mint is handling that "automatically delete old kernels".
The problem xfs is well known since years.

As I wrote, my first and last installation with Ubiquity have one thing in common: Although I was choosing "install into the MBR of the first hd / SSD" Ubiquity installed Grub into the MBR of a USB flash drive / MicroSD card - no doubt.

I repeat: Why not offer the LMDE installer?

[seeley]

Hi!
If you carefully read relevant topics of various forums, you' ll see: VirtualBox does not produce proof of no matter what.

Two friends needed help with their notebooks. They watched partitioning and installing 3 Mint releases on my internal and 2 on my external SSD (-> HowTo). Since writing the last 3 chapters of my help, I only booted from my external SSD.
Yesterday I again bootet from the internal SSD. The UUIDs of my "internal" files fstab concerning swap differ. Because all 5 distros were LMDE 2 or LM 17.2 (all DEs) either Ubiquity or the LMDE installer must have caused that. Only during my first installation I edited swap.

Next steps on external SSD: Partitioning and installing 2 non Ubuntu / Debian based distros; afterwards my friends must partition and install the desired distro(s) on their computers.