In my experience, it's common for Debian users to install Debian using the network installer and Expert Install mode. This is how I've installed Debian for 15 years. But it seems that very few Ubuntu users install Ubuntu using Expert Install. I encountered multiple issues today while installing Ubuntu 19.04 on a desktop computer using Expert Install, and when I searched the web for discussions about the issues, I found none.

For example, one of the Expert Install prompts was broken: the prompt read "Please enter the maximum percentage of free space on root filesystem to use for swapfile", but there was no field in which to enter a maximum percentage. I've never seen this prompt when I've installed Debian. I searched the web for the two phrases included in the prompt, and there were only two results!

"Please enter the maximum percentage of free space on root filesystem to use for swapfile" (0 results)

"Maximum percentage of free space to use for swapfile" (2 results)

This was surprising. I ended up performing the following web searches to try to compare the amount of Debian users and Ubuntu users who use Expert Install:

"Debian" "Buster" "Expert Install" (646 results)

"Ubuntu" "19.04" OR "Disco Dingo" "Expert Install" (34 results)

Lastly, I searched for stats and learned than only 12% of Ubuntu users choose Minimal Install, which is included in the graphical installer:

Users who opted for the Minimal Install

With this in mind, I'm guessing that less than 1% of Ubuntu users use Expert Install.

One of the arguments for using Ubuntu is that it's well-tested because of its large user base. But based on my experience today, installing a minimal system using the network installer and Expert Install doesn't seem to be well-tested. Am I mistaken?

Interesting find. I use Debian as well. I'm curious. I'll download the latest Ubuntu ISO and install it in a VM.

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Ubuntu desktop or server? The installer for Ubuntu desktop is designed to be as easy as possible. IMHO, the folks installing Ubuntu are not the kind of folks that would ever use an expert install option, unless a Linux power user actually likes Ubuntu. I could be wrong, maybe some power users like Ubuntu because "it just works", which ironically enough in my case is not at all true, but that is off topic...

When I used Debian, I too preferred the netinstall image and the expert install. Very simple and fast.

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I have not played with version 19 yet but from what I have read the developers have just switched from using a swap partition to a swap file. Since it was just released recently there are always a few bugs that still need to be worked out and since it was just released there might not be any web search results on this bug.

But your probably correct most users do not use the expert install.

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Back when I was fiddling with Ubuntu, version 17.10 had a swap file but that might have been a dev release, not sure. I do know it automatically created a file of a specific size and didn't give any options one way or another.

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Ouch... Your correct it was 17 that switched to a swap file.

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I didn't even know about expert installation possibility. I've been using my pxe server to boot the net install for awhile now. Something to look into although I find deboostrapping for upgrade / fresh install easier than completely booting pxe or iso on my existing machines. Faster to upgrade, less downtime as well.

FYI, the broken prompt appears at the end of the "Partition disks" process when using Expert Install via the network installer.

Okay, thanks for confirming my assumption.

I was considering installing Ubuntu (with Openbox) on one of my desktop computers instead of using Debian like I normally would because this computer needs Linux kernel 4.20 or later. Debian Stable, Testing and Unstable have kernel 4.19; whereas, Ubuntu 19.04 has kernel 5.0. But I think I'd rather use kernel 5.0 from Debian's experimental repo than use Ubuntu if the focus of the latter's testing is the full Ubuntu desktop with GUI-based installation, GNOME, etc. (and server installations, of course).

Thanks for the info. I confirmed just now that the Ubuntu developers switched from a swap partition to a swap file for Ubuntu 17.04 (see release notes).

I wanted to see if the bug I mentioned has existed since Ubuntu 17.04 was released. Unfortunately, the network installers for 17.04 and 17.10 are no longer available. So I installed 18.04 just now using the network installer and Expert Install, and the bug was present. I assume the bug has existed since 17.04, which is strong evidence that Ubuntu users, including the developers, don't use Expert Install. And this was just one of several bugs I encountered while using Expert Install; though, it was the only bug I could reproduce 100% of the time.

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