On Tuesday 14 March 2006 05:50, Lachlan Patrick wrote: > > Well, the installer _has_ to install the kernel and initrd in /boot, > > so if you don't create a separate /boot partition it will indeed put > > them in the partition that holds root. > > Sorry if this isn't the right forum to suggest installer > UI improvements, but... Yes, it is. > I was just reporting one [fairly newbie] user's surprise > that it went ahead and starting copying files without > asking "now copy boot files to /dev/hda6? (Y/n)" or even > letting a different destination be chosen. So what is different from boot files and other files? > Also, it seemed the disk partition screen didn't have > a "don't write changes" button, only "write changes" > (upgrades mightn't require any partitioning). The disk partitioner (partman) _always_ gives an overview of what changes are about to be made and asks for confirmation before writing changes. > I would have thought FIPS/loadlin was an obvious, > low risk, way to attract new users from Windows? > But perhaps there's a good reason why FIPS or loadlin > are not options in the installer? Because whether it has a chance of working or not depends to much on external factors we cannot control. > This is my first big upgrade since 2001 (the old > kernel didn't support all my hardware, Windows did). There have been huge changes in the Linux world since 2001. You cannot expect that the same setup you chose then will still be the optimal choice now or even work at all. > But given the choice between "modify the MBR? (Y/n)" and > "use a tried and trusted technique which doesn't involve > manipulation of the boot record", call me strange, but I'd > rather use the tried and trusted technique. I had dabbled > with LILO previously but decided I didn't really want to > be fiddling with the MBR if there was an alternative > (which there was). Tried, trusted and outdated... Windows is extremely unfriendly towards other Operating systems and multi boot setups which is why programs like bootmagic were quite popular for a while. Linux is about openness and so most of their bootloaders explicitly support multi boot. Grub is very good at that. Give us some credit for the fact that we will not break your system knowingly without very strong warnings. > As an upgrade scenario, I had a working system, but the > installer didn't recognise that. What do you mean? It did not recognize it during partitioning? But you told the partitioner yourself to use hda6, right? We do assume you know what you are doing when repartitioning as there basically is no way to prevent anybody overwriting data at that point. We just take care to tell the user what the changes will be and ask for confirmation. > On another matter, does the installer check what's in the MBR before > recommending overwriting it? No, but it does check what other OSes are on the system and will show a list of the ones it detected. If you are missing anything there, that's the point where you should consider if you want to continue or not. > OK, I'm sure grub is great. I'm just saying the user > might not want to use it, for whatever reason, e.g. > they already have LILO installed. Sure, that option is offered too. As I said: just use the <go back> option and choose either lilo or "no bootloader" as alternatives for grub. > Well, I agree, the user *should* be able to do this. > I'm just reporting that when I used the installer, > I chose to not install grub, and a second screen appeared > saying "are you sure? grub's great, you should at least > put it on a floppy". So I had already chosen not to use it. There is no such screen if you choose <go back>. You probably selected <no> to the question if it should be installed in the MBR, so it offered you the option of installing GRUB in an alternative location. So what is wrong with that? Choice is good; Windows does not offer you _any_ choice. Suggest you read the questions more thoroughly before replying to them.
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