I have done a ton of installations of SUSE and I basically see 4 different cases : 1. Clean disk - the installer prompts : /swap / /home Without explanations to the end-user why we propose it in this way (or maybe just a small one :-) 2. Windows on the disk : First prompt could be: Do you want to preserve or remove the existing Windows installation ? With two choices which lead to different templates. In case the user wants to keep her Windows, our installer copes perfectly with everything BUT the user is not able to decide how much she wants to shrink the partition. Our script can tell them for example : "the partition is 30% used" and show them a bar where they see what's used and on which they can move/choose visually how much they want to free for Linux (hopefully a 100% ;-). AFAIK from my experience, this is done in an arbitrary way now (at least from an user perspective). 3. SUSE on the disk: in this case the installer can detect SUSE and can give the following choices to the user : Do you want to preserve or remove the existing SUSE installation ? With two choices which lead to different templates. a/ upgrade the existing SUSE installation - automatically use the same / for the system, /swap and /home in the way they exist WITHOUT formatting /home, but later during user-creation automatically change the owner (in case the same user-name is created) b/ a second separate installation (the user wants to have 10.2 & 10.3 at the same time for example) - in this case the installation can proceed similarly to the Windows shrinking case whereas /home will be shrinked in order to create space for the new installation or the user is sent to Advanced partitioning and asked to create a partition in which the new installation could be done -> Advanced partitioning 4. Another LINUX flavor on the disk : installer detects another Linux and a partitioned disk and prompts: Do you want to preserve or remove the existing Linux installation ? With two choices which lead to different templates. a/ - the partition is /swap, /, /home - basically the same structure as SUSE would propose - the installer goes on and offers to format / and /swap and use /home without formating it. In case a user with an existing home folder is created, the scripts automatically change the ownership of this folder. - the partition is different from what SUSE would have suggested, so the installer prompts a brand new re-formatting of the whole disk b/ a second separate installation (the user wants to have SUSE & and another Linux at the same time for example) - in this case the installation can proceed similarly to the Windows shrinking case whereas /home will be shrinked in order to create space for the new installation or the user is sent to Advanced partitioning and asked to create a partition in which the new installation could be done -> Advanced partitioning 5. Advanced + Partition Resizing : In all cases there should be a possibility to switch to advanced partitioning without our "templates" where a skilled user could do what they would like to do (as it is currently). In this advanced options I would create a partition-resizing dialog with the help of which an user can easily resize any partition of choice - no matter if it is a LINUX or a WINDOWS partition. I have always lacked such a feature in the SUSE installer. What do you think ? Nayden Martin Schmidkunz wrote:
Hi Nayden,
I have a question - is this the mail-list where I can express some ideas about the way an initial partitioning is handled (during installation) ?
Sure! Just go on!
Enjoy,
Martin