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Idea #11296: Setup

Written by pusurx the 19 Jul 08 at 00:16. Related project: brainstorm.ubuntu.com. Status: New
Rationale
As a confident user and an extreme advocate for Ubuntu I wold say that there are only one thing missing.

It wold be nice if the home directory was an own partition, as a default suggestion at installation startup, and the installation sequence recognized it if it existed, and adopt it for future new installations

This will make it easier for newbies and the rest off us, when upgrading or starting from scratch installation.
Tags: home partition

6
votes
closed
Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #11296
Written by pusurx the 19 Jul 08 at 00:16.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #11296 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!

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Comments
ilektron wrote on the 19 Jul 08 at 06:52
I don't know how to vote on this one. Didn't OpenSUSE do this by default? I've done this on my laptop and several other computers, and for the most part it is very helpful. It allows several versions of ubuntu to be on the same computer.

The problem that I see is that sometimes problems occur when the different version of ubuntu have different versions of packages that have conflicting or changed config schemas. This means sometimes deleting some .program folders which a regular user might not be able to do, because they wouldn't have an idea whats going on.

gmatht wrote on the 19 Jul 08 at 09:36
See: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/5390/

This is less important now that ubiquity preserves /home by default (even if it is not on a separate partition). See e.g.discussion at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2008-May/004247.html

DanRabbit wrote on the 19 Jul 08 at 15:05
@gmatht

But what If I want more than Just Ubuntu?
By having a seperate /home partition I can safely switch distros, or just restore or upgrade ubuntu whenever I want. Its the freedom of choice and the safety that it guarantees that I think is most desired.

holizz wrote on the 19 Jul 08 at 20:18
-1 "my favourite X should be in the default install"

cheesehead (Brainstorm admin) wrote on the 19 Jul 08 at 21:38
No benefit to non-geeks (the users we supposedly want).

Only geeks want multiple distros, to play with them and break them and reinstall them. Nothing wrong with that, I'm a geek and I do that too.

Do NOT give my grandmother this option while installing. it will merely confuse and enrage her. She just wants it to work and doesn't care how.

-1

retj wrote on the 20 Jul 08 at 03:29
The system would do this as default for Newbie-automated installation, the option should be shown for advanced users. The main idea is right there are other things that can be corrected, think before voting cheesehead.

cheesehead (Brainstorm admin) wrote on the 21 Jul 08 at 01:12
retj,

I stand by my original reason for -1: No benefit to non-geeks.

There's been plenty of discussion about this in other forums; I've seen plenty of great reasons for geeks to do this. I've done this myself at times. I see no benefit to my grandmother.

chipbennett wrote on the 10 Sep 08 at 19:41
No benefits to non-geeks?

You know those dist-upgrade things we do every six months?

Ever had one go absolutely haywire?

Non-geeks are not going to know how to recover from that, aside from re-installing from the LiveCD.

Without \home as a separate partition, those non-geeks will be saying good-bye to all of their data in \home. Though, apparantly, ubuqiity is being updated to recognize previous \home partitions, by far the safest strategy is to keep \home data separate from the root partition.


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