manual partitioning suggestions

[mephisto]

I decided to go for it and install pardus on its own partition. The setup was as follows:

1 ntfs
2 fat32
3 ext3
4 swap

I think the partitioner could be improved somewhat to make it less frightening, although it generally does a really great job.

1) the edit option doens't seem to remember what was set for formatting, so everytime you check the partition it sets formatting selected.

2) it would be nice if after the manual formatting the program would say what it will do (eg format hda3, install root in hda3 etc). Now it was a bit of a guess if things would be done as asked, see 1) as to why

3) when I chose the edit for eg the ntfs partition, all options were greyed out (no choice) but swap was set. I could choose formating though. The problem was when I disabled formatting and pressed ok, since that would give me the message: there is a request with the same partition type and request type. So I could only cancel, leaving me again with the question what the partition would do.

[kle]

This might be an add-on for ideas when improving the partitioner tool during installation:

My latest partition-scenario for a pardus installation was:
1 - fat hidden recovery partition (notebook)
2 - fat 32 existing system
3 - swap
4 - ext3 Pardus

i ended up repartitioning again - because i didn't like the result (well, i didn't pay enough attention..). and because:
I had choosen my "last" partition NOT to fill up the remaining space, justa a part, letting space to grow or to add another partition.
However, this ext3 partition was joyfully created, as primary partition, so any other space was LOST / inaccessible !! Because after having created 4 primary partitions (disk IDE) there is nothing left to create.

Maybe the installer could have alerted me that i am "losing" space with my selection, and/or propose to create the last partition inside an extended partition ??

Ok, this time it gave me a chance to learn (remember) some stuff again...

[Xunil]

Have to agree that, even though the partitionner works well (better than Ubuntu's or Mandriva's, I find), it's somewhat abstract and won't explain some of its "behaviors" or... "refusals" (ie : won't create more than 4 primary partitions -- which is normal, but not everybody knows that).

Also : some kind of "visual explanation" would make it much less frightening and iser friendly.