default partition scheme without /home - why ?

[Stewart Adam]

On Mon, 2008-03-10 at 08:48 -0500, Benjamin Kreuter wrote:
> On Monday 10 March 2008 09:33:12 Paul W. Frields wrote:
> >
> > Those users could read the Installation Guide, which talks about this
> > exact situation and how to set up partitions that make sense.  I don't
> > think it's unreasonable to expect that new users who are going to
> > install should read the document that tells them how to do it.  There's
> > not a lot we can do for people who won't read.
> 
> As much as I hate to say it, I have to side with Valent on this one.  It does 
> make sense to have the default layout create a separate / and /home partition 
> layout, especially in LVM where these can be resized later.  I can't really 
> take a guess at what the ratio should be, but 10-20GB for / would suffice for 
> the default install (20 seems excessive, but there is no real way to tell).
> 
> Perhaps we could create a new option, like "Recommended layout for desktops," 
> that uses a reasonable estimate of what the partition layout should be.  If a 
> user wants to change that, they can (and they can always "review and modify" 
> the partition layout), and they can always resize later if they need to.  New 
> users are often unsure of what the partition layout is, and unfortunately, 
> they often fail to read the install guide.
> 
> Or perhaps we could just throw in an easy to read, unambiguous message on the 
> download page, to the effect of, "New users, read this before installing."
> 
> -- Benjamin Kreuter
+1

As far as the sizes go, why not add a button to Anaconda that suggest
a good recommended size to the user? Something like this would be fine:
(total disk size) - (150MB /boot) - (swap) - (15GB /)

I based those numbers on my system - I've got three kernels installed,
as well as some large packages like IcedTea, OO.o, libgcj, a bunch of
*-devels, and some Mock jailroots.  All that's taking less than 10GB
on /, and /boot is 19MB. I can't really see 150MB being filled quickly
(that's about 7 kernels installed at once!) and a 15GB / should leave
plenty of space for some games or whatever the user would like to
install.

Implementing a /home would be a win-win-win... If the user doesn't know
what to choose, the installer does it for him/her. If he/she does,
then /home is exactly as they like it. And in either case, it makes
upgrade paths a lot easier.

Stewart