On Sunday September 4 2005 3:23 am, Shriramana Sharma wrote: > FWIW I add my opinion on this topic. Somebody was asking > since many people will be having many different kinds of > requirements - some downloading movies and torrents, and > some not, I think this will be OK: > > 1. Calculate the req space for the full install. Add 1 to 2 > GB to that for stuff that the user may install themselves. > Assign this for /. > > 2. Calculate the swap in the way it is calculated > presently. (I'm running 2 GB swap and it is never used > after my 512 MB RAM.) > > 3. Assign all remaining HD space to home. > > This way, nobody even who downloads huge torrents or movies > can complain that their home folder is insufficient, since > even if they had had no separate /home partition, they > would not have been able to store their torrents etc after > installing SuSE. > > Or maybe a small change in 1: Calculate the req space for > the install that the user has selected and then allow 1 to > 2 GB. I would think that anyone who needs a full install > will usually be someone who can do the partitioning > themselves. > > What do others think? Hi all.
This is my first post to this list. I'm currently running SUSE 9.3. This is my first experience with SUSE so consider my comments those of a genuine newbie. I have been running Linux, mostly mandrake Mandrake and to a lesser extent fedora, for several years. I have always understood that having /home on its own partition was more secure in that it was more separated from the actual OS and applications. It also seems to be much easier to do upgrades to one's OS without endangering one's personal settings or data if they are on a separate partition. My real reason for responding though is to say that I believe that it is imperative that we aim all installation instructions and programs directly at the beginner. That doesn't mean that an expert or some such alternative can't be offered, only that the basic install must be aimed at the complete novice. When It comes to partitioning, I think the user should be offered a recommended default which requires no interaction other than clicking on accept or OK. I do think that a second and possibly third "default" or recommended partitioning scheme be made available. simply by selecting partitioning plan -2 (swap / boot /root /home each on its own partition for example.as far as sizing is concerned again I think especially for swap a recommended default size be offered but that an easily selected option be offered. IE swap size should be: 512M (OK) 1G (OK) or 2G.(OK) or some such. To whatever extent possible I believe that words like expert should be avoided. I know from experience that it is very intimidating to be offered a default or expert as one's only choices. Perhaps "custom" could be used instead of expert. Even though I've had 3+ years of experience with Linux, I'm a complete newbie to SUSE. So I wouldn't be comfortable selecting expert as my choice for disk formatting or much else for that matter. But I undoubtedly would be comfortable accepting alternative A, or B, or possibly even custom mode providing it didn't carry dire warnings. I know that all too often programmers program for other programmers. On one of the Gentoo mailing lists they actually said that the programmers don't pay any attention to the general mailing lists and their requests but only listen to other programmers. That's part of the reason I decided against Gentoo. In short I believe that options can be offered without making the complete newbie feel overwhelmed or intimidated. On the subject of the manual: I do read manuals probably no more or no less than most others. I believe that many people (read newbies) even if they do read the manual are understandably confused by much of what they read. So we need to stop telling people to RTFM. The fact that a person (again read newbie) doesn't know what to do next is probably not because they haven't tried to find out and at least looked in the manual! Something I found very odd about the SUSE 9.3 users manual is that the term YAST does not even appear in the index. I hope what I've said makes sense to at least some of you. -- LTR [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
