Many people have trouble installing Ubuntu alone. I will list here some common problems people find and in the end I will propose some solutions.
Attitudes like: "If the user doesn't know how to partition he/she should ask for help from someone else more experienced" are not really the solution to attract new users (mainly people having their first Linux experience or without internet access).
Some problems:
1. One of the first things the partitioner does is to ask what kind of partition should be created. Well, more than 50% of the users would say: What is a partition ? (before even have to ask themselves "Why should I do it?").
2. People don't know they should create a "/" partition (does it sounds any intuitive at first glance ?)
3. People don't know why do they have to do it because "in te system X I don't need to do it ! Everything simply works out of the box". We should not think it as any natural concept.
Off course it has many more problems. Let us stop here and show some possibilities:
- An introductory screen with short and acurate information. One suggestion is:
First screen:
"Now you may choose to have your disk partitioned. This process can make your system more secure, responsive and easy to manage. "
Second Screen:
"Some advantages of partioning:
-Frequently people have their personal data (internet content, projects, documents under construction), system data (installed programs, configuration files, etc.) and some shared data (like music, video, documents, etc.). If you have more than one system you should use partitions to organize it. If you have only one system you may use partitions to separate the contents from each other. This technique permits, for example, one to erase the whole system data preserving your personal and shared data and allowing you to install a new system with your old content.
-You may want to install different file systems(fs) on each partition. One file system may be used to install other OS like Windows, Solaris, etc. Another fs may be used for software management while another one may be used to load big multimedia files faster or to keep your configuration files which are rarely deleted.
-You may give special permissions in the partition you want or use one as backup and deactivate it from external activities when are not using to protect your data.
"
After that the user will want to do partitions or if they don't they will at least know why not!
The installer should suggest a setup explaining it's usage:
"Partitions must have a name and a type:
Name - Type - Description
/ - Reiser - The / contains everything it is necessary to install the system.
/home - Reiser - This is where the users' personal data could be stored and managed.
/multimedia - xfs - This partition may hold music and video you rarely will delete but rather read frequently and other people could also see it.
Off course there is a device name and everything else, but first of all it should ask what to create and where to put it. Maybe the installer should not even ask where to put the partitions (like /dev/sda5...) because it's not so useful to know it if you are not an experienced user. But, off course, it should always follow an automatic behavior saving the user the work but always giving the option to know more.
It's enough for now. I appreciate your comments
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