Thoughts after doing a dual boot install

[David Whyte]

Hi list,

I have been running Ubuntu for a while on my mythTV server for a while
and just this morning installed Feisty alongside my long time Windows
XP partition.  (Some of you may remember I planned to do this with
6.06 but things got in the way).

I did a far bit of research to ensure I was educated about the process
as much as I could and watched the excellent screencast by Alan Pope.
That said, I still got very confused and nervous about the
partitioning stage of the installation wizard.

Anyways, I figured a good number of people would probably install
Feisty to achieve the same kind of setup and I think some work could
be done to make the partitioning screen a little less confusing.

For the partition screen, I was given three options similar to:
1) 'Guided: Resize partition.' with a slider to specify the partition size.
2) 'Guided: Use whole disk.'
3) 'Manually edit partition table.'

For me, it wasn't obvious (until I think about it now) that number one
was creating a second partition for use by Ubuntu and thus leaving the
XP data present and (hopefully) safe.  I personally decided to use
GParted to do the resize, however, this surely isn't the sort of thing
we expect users to know about or delve into.

When I restarted the Installation wizard after creating the new
partition, the partition screen now gave me four options:
1) 'Guided: Resize partition.' with a slider to specify the partition size.
2) 'Guided: Use whole disk.'
3) 'Guided: Install largest continuous free space.'
4) 'Manually edit partition table.'

This time, I wasn't sure whether the largest 'continuous free space'
meant my Windows partition (yes, I know it says 'free space'...but).

Anyways, I am thinking that if the first option was a little more
descriptive of what it means, it may alleviate some of the panic that
I encountered.

I would like to propose that better wording *could* be:
"Guided: Resize existing partition.  Ubuntu will be installed in the
space that is freed.'

Now, I know my English is generally pretty dodgy, however, if anyone
has any comments I appreciate them.  Was I just acting dumb during the
install or is this a legitimate issue?

Also, does anyone know how this sort of change gets proposed to the Ubuntu team?

Cheers,
Whytey