rfc: expectations for partitioning, Fedora.next

[Chris Murphy]

On Feb 21, 2014, at 12:46 PM, Mike Ruckman <roshi at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> 
> The hard part, IMO, is figuring out what 'common configurations'
> should be included with the installer.

I think the hard part is having the guts to make a subjective, yet reasonably well informed decision, and just stick to it. Harder for some than others is ignoring the peripheral squawking that ensues, but is easier when reminded that 99% of those people aren't the intended target market for this path.

The ideological decision, is that there should be no partition scheme option. Not which one should be chosen. If I bemoan Btrfs vanishing from the Automatic/guided path partition scheme pop-up, give me an egg and tell me to suck it. Seriously.

> I would imagine the answer to
> this is going to be different for each of the WG products. I wouldn't
> be surprised if going forward we end up with multiple installers (at
> some point down the line) - or multiple versions of anaconda.

I go in the other direction. Chop out everything that causes the installer to be customizable by product, and instead have a post-install interface that flavors the base install as a particular product and downloads whatever else is necessary to achieve that.

What is in common for Server and Workstation? They have to boot, and startup to a working prompt or gdm. That's all the installer needs to do to be successful. Goose. Gander. Good.

I think we shoot ourselves in both feet by creating derivatives of the installer. Maybe it's realistic to have each product decide what, if anything, is hidden. But we are only talking about two products. The Cloud product will have images, installer isn't applicable.

> Even then, if we were able to trim the installation options to one or
> two options, those options aren't going to be the same across WGs.

Heavens to Betsy we might have to have FESCo host an arm wrestle! I'd pay for that if we add mud.

Server folks might want XFS, to be in parity with RHEL 7. I don't know why that would bother Workstation folks, XFS is just fine for that use case too. I'd say Workstation should do what Server does, unless all outstanding Btrfs concerns and questions are fully and satisfactorily addressed by the flip date.

For Manual/custom path it needs some more consideration but I'd say no Server or Workstation derivatives. Rename it Advanced Partitioning (or Advanced Storage Configuration since it really isn't about partitioning as much as oldui).  And then we see how realistic and helpful it is to hide certain features. The challenge there it's not any one particular tick box that makes it hard, it's when used in combination that things get complicated. Example, for rootfs I'd say do not expose raid 4 or 6. Maybe even don't expose raid 5 at this default reveal level for rootfs, only for /home. That sort of thing.

Chris Murphy