Disk Druid - Fedora flame #1

[Scot L. Harris]

On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 17:28, Jeff Vian wrote:

> Exactly my point.  
> 
> It seems Gene and others would like fdisk as one of the options during
> the install instead of *forcing* all those who have no clue about
> getting to a shell (Shall we say newbies) to use only the one tool
> someone has deemed safe (DD) or allowing it to autopartition.  Both of
> which choose their own way of organizing the partitons, and it seems to
> me that autopartitioning uses LVM (in addition to destroying existing
> partitions), which may not be ideal for some.
> 
> What I do not understand is why choices are being removed from menus and
> hidden.  I thought this was about freedom to choose, as well as making
> it attractive and easy for new users.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


I think the idea is to make it relatively easy for new users.  And the
best way to do that is provide defaults that work for 90% or better of
most users.  For those that have progressed beyond "newbie" stage and
fall in that 10% of users that have legitimate requirements for
non-standard setups or just plain want to mess with their systems it
should not be to hard to expect them to spend a little time reading the
release notes and other documentation that is widely available on the
web or at the book stores.  

If you present a complex list of options for a new user who for the most
part has NOT read the release notes or any other documentation for that
matter, they will invariably start poking the buttons and frobbing the
knobs which generally results in a sub-optimal install or at worst a
seriously broken system.

I think many people forget that new users don't have the many years of
experience that many people on this list seem to have.  And by limiting
the initial set of choices for new users a better experience can be
delivered that is a good thing.  The new user gets the immediate
gratification that most users want with very little sweat involved. 
Those that progress to the next stage and research questions they have
will find a whole lot more options available behind the curtain that
would have perplexed and confused them at first.  

So how about we leave this topic where it began, Disk Druid works for a
large percentage of the user base and fdisk is available for the
experienced user if it is needed.



-- 
Scot L. Harris
webid at cfl.rr.com

"Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
-- Hannah Arendt.