Why does the default Ubuntu Install format the Hard Disk?

[Phillip Susi]

IIRC, when I installed ubuntu on my brother's Dell a few weeks ago, it 
had 3 partitions.  One was a Dell rescue partition with diagnostic tools 
on it, the other was the recovery partition with a ghost image on it for 
a factory restore, and the third was the big NTFS partition.

Ubuntu had no problem shrinking the NTFS partition and created 1 new 
extended partition with / and swap inside, /boot was not on a primary 
partition.

Colin Watson wrote:
> 
> The default *is* auto-resize, *providing* that auto-resize is actually
> possible. The constraints on PC partition tables are such that it is
> often not possible to offer automatic resizing without significant
> shuffling of partitions that I don't think it's appropriate to attempt
> automatically.
> 
> We may be able to relax these restrictions somewhat if partman is
> enhanced to understand when it doesn't need to force the partition
> containing /boot to be a primary partition.
>