Installation overwrote windows installation too easily

[James Takac]

Hi Meg

On Monday 08 September 2008 22:16:01 Ashley Benton wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 7:49 AM, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:
> > Ken McLennan wrote:
> > > G'day there One & All,
> > >
> > >>     Alas there is no software I am aware of that can tell the
> > >> difference between Windows and any other data on a Hard Drive.
> > >
> > >    It doesn't have to determine any differences, nor to find what OSes
> > > are installed anywhere. It needs to halt the process, offer a dialog
> > > with an explicit warning to the user about what will happen and giving
> > > them an opportunity to back out just in case they DO have windows (or
> > > Solaris, or Fedora, or Mandriva, any other OS) installed. It doesn't
> > > matter whether they do or not, but should provide the warning for a
> > > worst case scenario.
> > >
> > >    I doubt it would be difficult, just a dialog with a "Cancel &
> > > Return" option and a "Go Ahead and Nuke" option.
> > >
> > > See ya,
> > > Ken
> >
> >     Loose a lot of Ubuntu converts that way. A Windows user knows little
> > or even less than that about a computer. You ask them how many hard
> > drives, they ask "what is a hard drive?".
> >
> >    In a perfect world everyone would be born computer smart and then
> > you can ask them to use $sudo fdisk -l and decide from the output. That
> > was how early Linux was done. A README said "make a partition and give
> > it an ext2 file system". Then load the system from the cd-rom. Then
> > there were very few Linux users :-)
> >
> >
> > Karl
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >        Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
> >        Linux User
> >        #450462   http://counter.li.org.
> >   PGP 4208 4D6E 595F 22B9 FF1C  ECB6 4A3C 2C54 FE23 53A7
>
> Effectively I didn't know anything when I came from Windows but it is very
> difficult to delete Windows by accident with the live cd. If you say write
> to the entire hard drive and read the answer it tells you that everything
> will be deleted. If you use only part of the hard drive you can't leave
> less than the minimum space for Windows.
> If you look at the opposite and have to reinstall Windows it doesn't leave
> you a choice completely delete everything. You don't have the option of
> leaving Ubuntu on the partition (at least not when you don't use a
> partitioner to reinstall, and that I still don't know how to do),.
> My point is if you get a virus in your windows partition and reinstall from
> the Windows cd Ubuntu will be removed without other visible option but if
> you have a problem with Ubuntu usually Windows is safe as long as you read
> before to press OK.
>
> Meg
>
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For the most part I tend to agree with you, but it can and still does happen. 
Even an expert in a given subject can still get it wrong. Just look at the 
different views from experts (so called) in various views.

James