Hi, after agreeing with you many times, that our partitioning module needs some facelift, I have created some mockups how this could look like: http://en.opensuse.org/UX/Partitioner The module would be divided into two tabs: * basic partitioning * Logical Volumes (maybe Logical Volumes Management (LVM) would be more appropriate) The "basic partitioning" tab provides: * An overview table with informations about hard discs and their partitions (as far as I understood Ihno there are plans to exchange the device names (hda, hdb) with the device ID, so I try to do this already in this mockup) * search for hard discs (might be cool for environments with lots of hard discs) * filter to display e.g. only active hard discs * an action area in the second half of the module where the user can work on the partitions without having to click an extra add/edit/delete button; the current mock-up shows the action area when the user clicks on an unallocated disc space. I thought about displaing a graphical overview, but I rejected that idea for the following reasons: * no additional information to the table overview * might be suitable for desktop environments but not in an environment where there are many partitions to manage which can be formated with many different file systems * the target audience (sys admins) prefer numbers to graphics * useless in textmode * needs quite a lot of space I think, that most of the mock-up should be instantly clear, I just want to mention some points: * hdd activation: to activate a hdd the user has to display an deactivated device and then mark the check box in the overview * partitioning schemes: came up in a discussion and should ease the deployment of partitions for ** unexperienced users as they can choose from different schemes (e.g. 3 linux partitions with equal size) ** experienced users as they don`t have to do the same work over and over again but can customize a scheme and then apply it. * dynamic resizing: came up in a discussion and means: if unallocated disc space is available and the partition is quite full it aquires needed disc space automatically. * Delete partition: the user needs to set the size of the partition on 0 MB. LVM part: * the basic workflow of creating a LV is: ** create a physical volume ** create a volume group ** create a logical volume (linear, stripe, mirroring, snapshot) ** format logical volume ** set mount point ** mount it On the first start of the LVM-tab there will come up a pop-up, which offers the user some help and explanation around the LV topic. This pop-up will have a "don`t show this dialog again"-button. The tab is devided into two sections * physical volumes * logical volumes In each section the user can create/edit/delete the corresponding volume type. Not a killer design, but it seems to me the easiest way to present this topic. So, what do you think? Enjoy, Martin -- Martin Schmidkunz User Experience Specialist martin.schmidkunz@novell.com +49 (0) 911 740 53-346 ------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) ------------------------------------- Novell, Inc. SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10 Your Linux is ready http://www.novell.com/linux -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-ux+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-ux+help@opensuse.org