I am installing 11.04 on a test PC. My standard drive layout, developed over many years and many distros is as follows:

sda1 /
sda2 /home
sda3 swap
sda4 /data

/ and /home are relatively small. I put most data files on /data to facilitate hot backup of important data to another drive or machine. / and /home are periodically cold backed up with g4l. That said...

I noticed that the install partitioner in 11.04 only allows me to select from a list of mount points. / home var etc. I can not type in a mount point of my liking as I have done since I started using Ubuntu about 6.4.

Is this Canonical's idea of an improvement?

Ken

Yes I can manually format the /data partition after install and add it to /etc/fstab. Still I would give Canonical three thumbs down on this enhancement.

You should take this over to the Ubuntu Forums. There you would find that you are an elitist trying to keep Linux from a wider audience. This is the standard reply to criticism there.

I have always used the Live CD to install Ubuntu and used gparted to create my partitions before running the installer as I have never trusted the partitioner there.

There is probably something wrong with you. Ubuntu is trying to have a configuration free experience for users. How dare you want to do something different that what they have decided you want?

Better get with the program. Better yet try a different OS.

Thanks widget, I may post over in Ubuntu land. For what is it worth, the installer will not install the boot loader on my system. I tried my custom layout with the 4th partition formatted but unnamed, with the 4th partition left as unallocated space and finally let the installer partition the disk to its liking. 8.04 installed fine and I ran it for a couple of years on the PC. CentOS installs fine, Fedora 15 just fine. I have been thinking of moving to another distro for a while. This fiasco is just another push.

And yes, I did file a bug report. I also filed a bug that the 10.04 server installer will not install on a SATA drive from an ATA CDROM drive. That one has been confirmed by others but not fixed to my knowledge.

Ken

p.s. I am downloading an 11.04 alternate CD. I will see if that can install the thing.

I think you are a glutton for punishment.

PCLOS is a good OS with nicer package management than its parent Mandriva. I really like Mandriva better though for some reason.

Right now all I have on here are several installs of Debian. One to use daily (testing), one set up secure (stable), three sids to play with different things and another testing to mess with. Ubuntu is too much agrvation for a grumpy geezer.

I am retired. This is just a hobby

The alternate CD does not work. It will not install from an ATA CDROM or DVDROM drive to a SATA hard drive. Same issue as I had reported with 10.04 server. I guess I will have to file another bug report.

Ubuntu reached its peak with 8.04 in my experience. 8.10 broke a number of things. I had to install 9.10 on my quad core PC as 8.04 did not recognize the hardware. I now have 10.04 running OK except for suspend/resume which Ubuntu and/or nVidia have hosed. It works sometime but not always. It seems that the X session crashes if I read the logs correctly.

Suspend/resume seems to work OK on CentOS 5.6 although my testing has been limited. I don't want to spend the time getting everything installed and tweaked just yet as 6.0 should be out any time.

Ken

Sounds like the RH branch works better on your box. Might be a wise move when you have had all the FUN you can stand with Ubuntu.

I came into Ubuntu at 8.04 and it remained my "main" OS up until I thought I could upgrade to 10.04. 10.04 will not run on my box well at all. Plymouth just isn't friendly. 3 to 20 minutes to boot and alt+sysrq+b to shut down is not my idea of a functioning OS.

8.04 was installed on one partition (didn't know any better) but I got it converted to Debian Squeeze a couple weeks ago with an ext4 / and the old partition still ext3 as /home. Works great, same kernel as 10.04 but it runs on here (no plymouth) and even shuts down.

I have been testing Ubuntu dev releases for some time now but just dropped that too. Ubuntu is running off all the old (opinionated) testers in favor of folks that did their first install of Ubuntu (most the first install of Linux) being Ubuntu 11.04 or maybe 10.10.

Most have switched to Debian Testing and/of Sid (like me), or to Fedora. The ones still there are mostly running Xubuntu or Lubuntu (or planning on it) for their stable install. Ubuntu, to me, can not be considered a stable install.

11.04 testing was crappy. 11.10, coming right before the next LTS has to have a lot of stuff thrown into it so that it can go in the LTS. Going to get rough here soon (that is kind of FUN) when A2 rolls around. Going to be a shock to all these new testers that should have waited for 12.04 testing which should be kind of gentle and boring, a good thing to start on testing with.

I expect a rough release of 11.10 and 12.04, particularly if they do not revert to the older style installer. It is "too hard for noobs" though so not a chance. I installed 8.04 as a very very green noob with no problem at all but I have recently learned over on the UFs that I am an elitist so that probably accounts for it.

Update:

The cannot install from PATA DVD to SATA hard drive is FIXED in Ubuntu 11.10 alpha 1 alternate CD. The bug still effects the 11.10 alpha 1 server disk. I have filed a bug against ubuntu-server 11.10 alpha 1.

Ken