[najati83]

If you are reading this: I installed Fedora recently because I wanted to try it and I found the partitioning process to be absurdly complicated, compared to that of Debian or Ubuntu (ubiquity). I have several partitions of several operating systems in this disk and I was hesitant to continue because it wasn't very clear what the partitioner was about to do with my disk. Unfortunately that was months ago so I can't really describe what the problems were.

[mattdm]

There's basically two ways to do advanced partitioning. (Of course, there's a "just do it" automated option too.)

1. I understand about disks, volumes, partitions, filesystems, and I want to build it all up. 2. I have goals (like redundancy) and would like to tell the installer to give me that from whatever resources are available.

The former works very well for sysadmins and Linux enthusiasts (the people likely to be quad-booting or whatever), but our research showed it was really painful for basically everyone else -- so we have a UI focused on the latter.

That said, we definitely want Fedora to be appealing to the former class as well. There is an Anaconda feature in the works to add a more-traditional partition manager option as well. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/AnacondaBlivetGUI (It's currently targetted for F26, but I'm not sure if it's going to make that with the current schedule.)

[gmluke]

I see what you're saying, but I suspect the top-down approach is not the cause of the usability issues with Anaconda. The problems are simply that it isn't always clear which buttons do what, which partitions are about to get zapped, and what the next action should be at any given point. It's not unusable, but it could be easier.

The Blivet GUI looks like it could fix many of these issues.

[mattdm]

Oh hey look, there is a [Test Day](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2017-04-06_AnacondaB...) scheduled for tomorrow (April 6, 2017) to shake out bugs in the new interface for F26.

[Tsiklon]

The partitioner would be absolutely fine were the system i was using intended to be a single OS machine. but mine isn't.

My issues with it are from a HCI perspective;

- the Done button is context sensitive which is rubbish.

   - Select Automatically Configure Partitioning and it will go back to the Installation summary

   - Select "I Will configure Partitioning" it will go into the partitioner.

- There is no Cancel button to discard all changes instead you have to go into the partitioner and hit the refresh button

- The Available space is across all disks not on a per disk basis.

- It's not immediately clear whether the plus or minus buttons in the partitioner will create partitions, delete partitions, or adding them to the installation selection.

[gmluke]

I agree with all these criticisms. The anaconda installer, particularly the partitioning interface, is not at all intuitive. The first time I installed Fedora alongside an existing OS I thought it was really likely something would get messed up.

Debian's installer is excellent, in my experience.

[Tsiklon]

In my opinion; of all the sections in an Operating System's installation program the partitioner should be the least vague of all.

At every step of the partitioning/volume management process you should be able to quickly undo or back out of your selection. only when the user is happy with the structure or layout should any change be committed, likewise there should be no ambiguity in the functionality of any aspect of it's operation.

After all it is your data you may be potentially blowing away.

It's been a while since I last installed Debian, so I can't comment on the installation experience there though I can't recall running into any issues. It was a perfectly forgettable experience. The Ubuntu installer was also excellent, and the partitioning aspect was both clean and clear when creating a custom setup.

[cat199]

a few releases back they 'improved' the partitioning wizard..

(compare to RHEL6/CentOS, which was essentially the old code)

this is the result.

yay progress!