Re: new squeeze
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 11:25 PM, Miles Fidelman
<mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> wrote:
> Tom H wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 10:30 PM, Doug<dmcgarrett@optonline.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> I just downloaded debian-testing i386 Net Inst and burned the
>>> .iso onto disk. Before I do something silly, I want to make sure
>>> that this is designed to live with other os's on the hd. (I remember
>>> one older version of Ubuntu that took over the drive, and wiped
>>> everything
>>> else out.) If everything is copacetic, I'll put it
>>> on my laptop along with Win XP and PcLinuxOs. Please advise.
>>
>> Only user error wipes out an already-installed install at
>> install-time, be it Debian, Ubuntu, or any other distribution...
>
> That depends on your definition of user error.
>
> It's quite easy to wipe out an existing installation, all it takes is giving
> the installer the default answers. I do it all the time on a sandbox
> machine that I use to evaluate different configurations.
>
> Now if you consider it user error to give the default answers, when you
> actually want to save the current install, then your anwer is accurate.
I do. It's a PEBKAC. With d-i and its Ubuntu implementation in its
alternate and mini installers, the default is to use the entire disk,
whether there are partitions in use or not. So, you have to know that
you cannot simply choose the defaults if you want to preserve another
install. With Ubuntu's installer, aimed at a less technical crowd, the
default is to do a side-by-side install.
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