Screen 11 - Allocate Disk Space

[seb128]

The design for screen n°11, Allocate Disk Space

Design details https://people.canonical.com/~platform/desktop/installer/11.%20Allocate%20Disk%20Space/

[felagund]

Would be great if there was an option to use systemd-boot as the Boot loader. It saves me 4 seconds every boot. GRUB2 is slow.

[merlijn-sebrechts]

I think the vertical layout might be confusing because Windows and other distros show these horizontally. Having the installer also show these horizontally has the advantage that users will be better able to link what they see in Windows to what they see in this installer.

I think it might also be useful to show more explicitly that these partitions are part of a single disk. For example, by drawing a rectangle around all partitions.

[long-chung]

There is a before and after state on this screen.
@galgalesh the 2 states are in different columns hence why there is no border around the whole of the sum.
@madsrh same point as above
See the Design details above for the other state

[merlijn-sebrechts]

@long-chung

To better show what I'm talking about, I added the rectangles in red to the before and after disks. The rectangles show the confines of the disk so on the "before and after" screen, you'll see two rectangles.

Another comment: the striped (full) part of the partition is the lowest part. This doesn't really reflect reality: a partition is filled from the beginning, not from the end. The location of the data on a partition has a lot of influence on what will happen when the changes are written to disk. Free space can easily be "cut off" the end of a partition and it's very easy to create a new partition with this space. This is a very quick process.

However, if you want to use that free space to create a new partition in front of the existing partition, that will be a long and complicated process because now all the existing data from the partition needs to be copied to later sectors. This will take a long time. In many cases, this will take longer than all the other parts of the installer. Such partitioning can easily double or triple the total time to install Ubuntu.

If the visual representation reflects the physical representation (= partitions are filled from the beginning), then this is a lot more intuitive to users.

[long-chung]

@galgalesh You've raised some excellent points. Thank you for sharing

[merlijn-sebrechts]

A final note; I just noticed that in the "before" and "after" graphics, the size of the Windows 10 partition does not change even though the size of the Windows rectangle changes. I was convinced this setup was going to shrink the Windows partition until I read the numbers.

[Mannshoch]

As an Idea,
why not preset wished mount points and after that allow to design the Disks. It may allow the installation manager to help not to accidentally remove or formatting a partition you wish to use.

See Mockup:

[seb128]

The design has been updated and is back to an horizontal layout for now, the screenshot on this ticket refreshed, the previous vertical layout is still visible in the comments for reference though

[Feichtmeier]

Little update from the theme, when a pending pr will be merged after review, the buttons should be very close to the ones in the mock-up (bigger)

[corradoventu]

many users are used to gparted so it is better to have the same layout

[corradoventu]

Try install from https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-canary/pending/ dated 2021-06-25 09:26 the window 'Allocate disk space' is resizable but is empty. Can not continue.

[Mannshoch]

As an Idea,
why not preset wished mount points and after that allow to design the Disks. It may allow the installation manager to help not to accidentally remove or formatting a partition you wish to use.

See Mockup:

Any feedback on this Idea?

[long-chung]

@Mannshoch We have decided to revert back to the horizontal layout for the time being.
Your really like this idea and will certainly consider this approach in the future.

Thanks for your feedback and participation as always.

[corradoventu]

Try install from ISO dated 2021-07-10 09:44
snap:ubuntu-desktop-installer stable/ubuntu-21.10 36
The window for 'Allocate disk space' seems very different from design

I saved the directory /var/log/installer if needed

[jpnurmi]

Could someone list the supported filesystem formats and all pre-defined mount points?

[corradoventu]

I don't see this screen, trying install with ubuntu-desktop-installer 0+git.15f09f4 71 the screens i see during install are in
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tWDTBLfrFKzJFSEfC70t9Uc1SAu0sj4H?usp=sharing
gparted and disk-utility screens for reference.

[corradoventu]

I hope this is the answer you wanted

[corradoventu]

On my desktop with an HDD disk sdb and an SSD disk sda screen 'Allocate disk space' does not detect my disk sda:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/subiquity/+bug/1971148