Re: Bug#652275: Guided partitioning should not offer separate /usr, /var, and /tmp partitions; leave that to manual partitioning

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

The Fungi <fungi@yuggoth.org> writes:

> On 2011-12-21 10:42:56 -0800 (-0800), Josh Triplett wrote:
>> People expect that they can use all the capacity of their disk
>> without having to take unusual steps like resizing partitions and
>> filesystems. After installing Debian on a 1TB drive, "df -h"
>> should say that you have just under 1TB of free space, not just a
>> handful of GB.
> [...]
>
> Which is why I suggested that half the challenge with shifting that
> paradigm is education, to reset those expectations among the user
> base. I didn't mean to imply it would be easily accomplished...
> after all, there's an entire computing lifetime of momentum behind
> us which set the original expectation of all your disk being
> formatted ahead of time. It's not a change in behavior the average
> user is going to warm to overnight, but more user-friendly tools to
> manage that procedure and keep track of the situation (available
> space on filesystems in each logical volume versus unallocated
> extents in the volume group) might go a long way toward easing the
> transition.

It would be nice if package metadata had more detailed space usage. For
example the Installed-Size split up by /, /usr, /var, /usr/share. Then
apt could check the most common filesystems for enough space and for the
ultimate expereince offer to resize the filesystem for you.

Desktops like Gnome and Kde could also have one of those horrible popups
telling you that /home is nearly full and offer to grow it.

Growing a filesystem indeed doesn't have to be complicated. It just
needs a shift in users expectations and some programming.

MfG
        Goswin