Non destructive install is important.

[Aigars Mahinovs]

On 9/1/06, Michael R. Head <burner at suppressingfire.org> wrote:
> > However for the first-time user of linux this is perplexing and it
> > should be as easy as version 6.06.
>
> How does this request make sense unless you already have an existing
> linux partition? This is not meant as an adversarial question, but an
> actual point of confusion for me.

A user that installed Ubuntu previosely and now needs to either
upgrade or reinstall would fall into this problem. I would see the
most appropriate solution to go like this: make an offer to format the
partition by default, but allow the user an option to refuse that. If
user refuses the format, offer him to move all old data of that
partition into a /old.$timestamp/ subdirectory, but also allow the
bypass that. However showing a big fat warning about such action would
be very appropriate.

Later at this point some recovery tools could hook in to really try
and restore the system that was installed there - restore the users
and their home directories, mounted filesystems, installed packages,
configuration of such packages, ...

--
Best regards,
    Aigars Mahinovs        mailto:aigarius at debian.org
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