replacing the Startup Disk Creator

[Marc Deslauriers]

On 2015-09-17 06:23 PM, Alberto Salvia Novella wrote:
> Nio Wiklund:
>> Disks (gnome-disks) is also very simple and reliable.
> 
> It isn't. I use it frequently, and usually it loses its ability to format disks
> in certain file systems.
> 
> 
> Nio Wiklund:
>> I think the price of replacing it for the moment far outweighs the
>> cost of fixing the few bugs it has to make it work well for everyone.
>> It happens to be an LTS, and it would be great to be able to
>> offer such an improvement in our next LTS release :-)
> 
> I feel this is right. Unetbooting has always been more resilient and versatile
> than Startup Disk Creator.
> 

I disagree. The incredibly long list of Unetbootin bugs leads me to believe it's
in a worse state than Startup Disk Creator:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/unetbootin/+bugs?orderby=-id&start=0
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unetbootin/+bugs?field.searchtext=&orderby=-id&start=0
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=unetbootin
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=775689

I have no objection to replacing Startup Disk Creator with something better, but
the replacement would need to at least adhere to the following criteria:

1- Support UEFI
2- Be easy to use (including user testing)
3- Use a modern secure design (backend service that does the minimum privileged
operations, frontend that supports multiple toolkits, communication over dbus
and policykit integration)
4- Support udisks for proper hardware integration
5- Be reliable
6- Be written in a language that is maintainable
7- Be of quality enough to pass a MIR (Main inclusion request)
8- Have developers who are willing to commit to supporting it in the Ubuntu
archive, and for the duration of the LTS releases

Looking at the list of alternatives that are listed in the forum thread, I see
no viable alternative that would be a good enough replacement for the moment.

Marc.