Advanced partitioning redesign

Matthew Paul Thomas mpt at canonical.com
Sun Jul 24 22:10:52 UTC 2011


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I have just finished the first draft of a redesign of Ubiquity's
advanced partitioning stage.
<https://docs.google.com/a/canonical.com/Doc?docid=0AU5sFuLRpCpBZGZra2pqY2pfMTAxZ25rcnBnNXY&hl=en_US#4_5_2_Manual_partitioning_7972>
This was one of the work items for "Ubiquity advanced partitioner
redesign"
<https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/foundations-o-ubiquity-advanced-partitioner>.

The overall design is based on vertical "Before:" and "After:" partition
charts, with the details of the selected partition alongside them, so
you'd no longer need to deal with separate dialogs when creating or
changing a partition.

For individual partitions, I propose a "Use for:" menu separate from the
File system menu and mount point field -- so that you don't need to
know, for example, that Ubuntu needs to be installed on a "/" partition.

To help ensure that the design makes sense, I've incorporated
suggestions for fixing all except two of the bug reports I could find
about the current design:
*   Installer disk layout utility does not warn sufficiently before
    formatting <http://launchpad.net/bugs/273925>
*   Partition diagrams are far too wide for the default installer window
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/287620>
*   RFE: use graphics elements to represent partitions and changes
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/105157>
*   Red and green for partitions causes problems for colourblind people
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/315257>
*   'Revert' context menu on partition reverts all changes, not just
    the selected one <http://launchpad.net/bugs/465730>
*   checked box is too difficult to see in advanced partitions list
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/594378>
*   installer's partitioner "use as" has no default
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/236866>
*   manual partitioner automatically selects "format" when changing
    file system, without warning <http://launchpad.net/bugs/262504>
*   Ubiquity manual partitioner "Edit partition" dialogue could be
    improved <http://launchpad.net/bugs/533618>
*   Allows resizing partition to create a new partition that's too
    small for installation <http://launchpad.net/bugs/290928>
*   Partition resize dialogue (non-destructive/size wording)
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/224856>
*   In manual partitioning, choosing partition for "/" is non-obvious
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/191112>
*   You must know the format of your partition to enter the mount point
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/274297>
*   prepare mountpoints partition names unfriendly
    <http://launchpad.net/bugs/63064>
*   Manual partitioner gives no help when already have four primary
    partitions defined <http://launchpad.net/bugs/86202>

I have not yet completed designs for RAID
<http://launchpad.net/bugs/44609> or LVM
<http://launchpad.net/bugs/43453>, but I've done enough work on them
that I'm confident they'd fit into the new design.

However, there are probably several technical errors or subtle
impossibilities in what I've written. So please review it and let me
know what you think.

Thanks
- -- 
mpt
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