Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-ux (89 mails)

[Lukas Ocilka <lukas.ocilka@xxxxxxx>]

Martin Schmidkunz wrote:
> 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

Hi,

First of all, I have to say that partitioning is IMAO impossible to do
without Wizards if we want to cover both use cases - newbies and IT
administrators.

There are so many tasks that user needs to/can do when installing a
system on a disk, or even installing a second system (already installed
Windows), which is a very common use-case, that we just can't do
everything from one (or) two dialogs.

In my opinion, the very first dialogs should a selection of use cases,
defined by what partitioner finds on the current disk e.g.:

  (x) I want to shrink Windows installation and use the free space
      for openSUSE installation
  ( ) I want to use all disks for openSUSE system
  ...
  ( ) I want to run an expert partitioner

Partitioner needs more than a face-lifting, it needs good wizards that
helps you to do very difficult task in a few very simple tasks. Common
user doesn't need to know even what a hard disk is and how it looks
like. People want to use our system, they don't want to install it more
than once and not all of them "want to learn more" ;)

BTW: I've attached some screen-shots from Ubuntu installation 6.06. Just
to add some more ideas into the Partitioner Ein Topf :)

To be honest, I wouldn't understand this overcrowded dialog very well:
http://en.opensuse.org/Image:20052007_partitioner_redesign.png

> 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.

When doing such a complicated task as creating new partition or resizing
some old one definitely is, it's better to provide enough additional
information that wouldn't fit into one dialog (for all such cases
together). We really need to provide textual help for such tasks to make
users understand what they do and why...

Pop-up windows do the job very well, just as Partition Magic or Ubuntu
already do.

> 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:

I wouldn't be so strict about not-displaying the graphical overview.
Sure, IT administrators wouldn't probably need it, but a common use
with, let's say, maximally three disks would love it.

One picture can tell more than a thousand words...

I don't, of course, want to discourage you, just, please, think about it
in the way we need to make newbies understand also to prevent from
data-loss.

-- 

Lukas Ocilka, YaST Developer                     (xn--luk-gla45d)
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