Installation overwrote windows installation too easily

[Alan E. Davis]

I would appreciate direction re where to go with my concerns.  Is
there an appropriate list.  I have harped and complained on this list,
but it isn't making progress.  I'll try to file a bug report, but
first, at least I'd like to make a comment.

I ran a workshop, two times this week, for teachers.  Over 15 teachers
were able to install Hardy Heron, in less than two hours of workshop
time over two sessions.  Wow.  A testimony to Ubuntu..    Also WUBI
was the key to success for several people whose laptops had been
locked down by administrators so they could not set the bios to boot a
CD.

One user called me after trying to install on his desktop.  He was
struck by about four power outages during the process, and as it turns
out, Ubuntu installed all over the entire (SATA) disk.  Only one hdd
is on his machine.  There is not trace of Windows left on the machine.
 The experience of many others was that despite their worst fears,
they were left with the capability of booting either Ubuntu or
Windows, at boot time, and they were pleased that Windows was still
the default.

For my friend, however, this wasn't the case.  FIrst of all, he asks,
is there such a software engineer who can recover the windows data
after a formatting with ext3?

And second of all, I think I would like to reiterate my comment, some
months ago, that Ubuntu's installer makes it too easy to overwrite all
the partitions.  I would suggest (without being a programmer myself)
that it would be fairly easy to set up the installer with simpler
messages, and require more verifications before actually doing the
partitioning---especialy when selecting to use the entire disk.  It
should, in fact, be almost impossible to overwrite the entire disk
unless one really tried.  My friend said, after an 85% install, the
reboot saw the system just install itself.  I'm not sure what he
meant, but I think the upshot is that while he was given an option at
one point to install beside windows, the installer finally overwrote
the disk.

I think a major problem for my friend Will is that he doesn't even
know what a hard disk or a partition is.  Is it unreasonable to take
that level of user into consideration when setting up the installer?

By and large, I was more than happy with the result, that only a
couple of people (besides Will) had problems of a nature that made it
impossible to install.  In fact, one fellow was trying to copy the CD
iso image from a flash drive onto his hard drive to burn it, and ended
up installing it directly from the iso image!  We had no network on
the site, but I have gotten feedback from a few that they have been
able to get on line ok.

This Ubuntu GNU/Linux is a major accomplishment.  Kudos to the
developers who made this all happen!

Alan

-- 
Alan Davis

"It's never a matter of liking or disliking ..."
 ---Santa Ynez Chumash Medicine Man