On Monday 08 Sep 2003 3:07 pm, Bryan Phinney wrote: > On Monday 08 September 2003 08:50 am, Anne Wilson wrote: > > It works well if you know that you need to do it, but if you're > > there for the first time you don't find out until it's too late. > > I made that mistake the first time installed, learned my lesson > > <g> > > As much as I like the idea of the installer divvying up the disk > into several partitions for functionality, I can't blame Mandrake > for not doing that by default. Deciding how big to make each > different partition is as much an art as a science and highly > dependent on the person, risk aversion and what function the system > will be used for. For Desktop linux, I don't see the big deal > about using two big partitions, most people on the desktop don't > really need to worry about separating partitions as much and it > does offer greater flexibility when it comes to using a wide > variety of different sizes for different <partitions> like /var, > /usr, etc. With everything on one big partition, they can all use > as much space as they need from the primary partition. > > Once you start doing server functions, of course, that all changes > but Mandrake was aiming at desktop users, not servers, IIRC. > > Automated splits would be much harder and would invariable be wrong > for a sizeable portion of people leading to the same type of > complaints about the installer.
Yes - I think the big thing is the difference in use patterns, so automating it would be a pain. Perhaps a half-way to expert partitioning step would solve it, asking something like 'Do you want a separate /home partition' with a help that gives an idea of why. There will have to be some guesswork by the user re size, but that's not so bad, not compared with losing everything when you screw up your first-time install. Anne -- Registered Linux User No.293302 Have you visited http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org yet?
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
