On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 11:40 AM, jd1008 <jd1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Provide flexibilty for users who would want schemes other than anaconda's > defaults and very limited partitioning options.
Flexibility is not inherently a public good in its own right. It comes with costs, typically exponential. Storage stacks are no longer so simple as they once were, and I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that self-described "power users" don't know a lot of those fundamentals especially when it comes to multiple device storage. Therefore I'll argue increasingly even the power user isn't actually benefitting from customization. > Seems to me anacaonda is heading the way of a closed tool that assumes > one hat fits all. Please stop saying this until you can state exactly what hat you want that the installer doesn't provide. > And we used to think that commercially purchased > software was limited and restrictive!Strange how the open source > is heading into the same direction. Because functionality doesn't grow on trees? This is approaching ridiculous (if not past it), and you know what ridiculous means? Deserving of ridicule. Are you ready? > So, you want to tell people: first partition your drive with some other > tools before you use anaconda to install Fedora, and then? It's called a point and shoot installer. Once the media is prepared, you point the installer to the target(s) created in the previous utility, and the system is installed. Not rocket science, not complicated, not new. This is how Apple has done it since forever. > Newbies might not even know that Anaconda might still decide to > take it's own default and clobber whatever the user did as far as > pre-partitioning. If you leave enough free space, yes guided installation will use that and ignore precreated things, hence the pre-partitioning is neither clobbered nor used. In every other case the user becomes complicit in the clobbering (reclaim space or assigning mount points). > In fact the very first option displayed by anaconda > is to use anaconda's default partitioning scheme. Even if anaconda > will warn the user of what it will clobber, many newbies will not > necessarily understand the consequences. It only installs to free space. If all free space is taken, then you could argue reclaim space UI is cryptic for newbies because it deals with the esoterics of literal partitions, and combines passive determination of user intent into a single UI. The user needs to understand, and then convey, what the details of what they want to do (recognize partition purposes, select the right one, delete or resize it) before the installer knows intent rather than the reverse. The old UI sorta did this part better because you could explicitly tell it to replace an existing linux OS, or erase the whole drive. It had some (rudimentary) semblance of use case selection before involving the user in the details. So this could be seen as a regression. But that's an argument in favor of going farther with the paradigm new UI has overall opted for; to make things simpler, capable, less complicate, less esoteric, more stable, and yes less manual. Seriously get over it, manual control is overrated! Manual shift vs automatic shift. The automatics now have better gas mileage so that argument is lost. The CVTs are in every way better than shift or fixed ratio automatic shift transmissions. Anaconda has some room before it's a CVT, but the idea that manual control in and of itself is better or a good or a right or proper, it's absurd. I'll beat that dead horse into horse burgers. > Myself, I always know how to tell anaconda I will manually partition > the drive, without resorting to external tools. > But I cannot assume that ALL other people have the know-how to > manually partition their drives. Nor should they. Check the partitioning of a mobile device, it has more than a dozen partitions, the user doesn't need to be involved in this at all yet they benefit. It is possible to have an overall better experience, faster development, less bugs, but giving up this senseless emotional attachment to manual partitioning just for the sake of control. -- Chris Murphy -- users mailing list users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
