Fedora 15, new and exciting plans

[Casey Dahlin]

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 06:26:27PM -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 11:15:38PM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> > Well if you don't consider what Lennart mentioned [1] as a con against 
> > usage of lvm by default what pros do you see for having lvm by default 
> > for the novice end user?
> 
> When the novice end user realizes that they made some poor storage decisions
> initially, they can, with a little learning, fix it without much hassle.
> 
> I have a system which, for silly reasons, I did not use LVM, and then ended
> up having change a separately-mounted /usr, and now (in a sort of irony,
> considering this thread) can't shut down cleanly under systemd. Awesome.
> 
> I'm not particularly attached to LVM as a specific technology, but we need
> something with equivalent functionality before we ditch it.
> 

It also takes a decision out of the mix when a user buys a new drive. They can
just dump it in the volume group rather than having to learn how to place it at
a mountpoint and migrate data (the actual commands are no big deal. Learning to
weigh the costs and benefits of applying your new 1TB disk to /usr vs /home
isn't).

Its a usecase that matters to an interesting class of user: the petty power
user. They help Aunt Tillie with her computer. They built their own computer.
They think of themselves as quite tech-savvy. They are also liable to say
things like "If linux is so great why can't it even run normal programs?"

LVM is nice in that it accomodates this generally unpleasent sort of person
(who is much improved by education and has the potential to become a great
contributor once humbled and made willing to learn) though it does this by
offering a temporary crutch.

--CJD