[Suggestion]Partition management is confusing in the installer

I would like to suggest that the summary of partition changes be shown after the partitioning step before the account setup. Specially on setups like the one I use with /home in another partition I missed having the ability so see all the partition scheme after selecting it on calamares.

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I canā€™t say specifically, but every distro Iā€™ve used with Calamares is in that order, so Iā€™m not sure if thatā€™s something that could even be done. I know Dalto is really knowledgeable about it though.

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took me a while to be sure that my options where right, maybe they could print the scheme after the selection so you are sure that it is right before proceeding

Launch a terminal and use parted. No confusion there.

Advice: keep it simple. Use one ext4 partition per physical drive, with the exception of the EFI partition, of course. You can setup a swap file after the install. Keep the home directory on the same partition as root, on the fastest physical drive you have (keep the swap file on the same drive, too). If you have more than one physical drive, symlink the directories for Documents, Pictures, Videos, Downloads, etcā€¦ to your home directory from where you keep them.

Not sure how to achieve your ā€˜askā€™ - especially as I have avoided the issue for years - whenever I intend an ā€˜unusualā€™ layout, I ALWAYS take advantage of the fact of the ISO containing GParted as well as the installer and pre-configure to my intentions. It is easy enough to point Calamares at the correct places when they already exist :grin:

Of course, using parted directly (or other tool of your choice) is perfectly in line with this as well. It can be so much simplerā€¦

of course, many of my builds have contained multiple distros and filesystems, so are not that typical!

While the answer is correct it is non trivial in the sense it adds a new software to the installation process, also my I issue was not during format, it was to assign the proper mounting points as the installer did not even provide me a list with the required ones. Maybe they could generate this list with suggestions as the auto formatting does but give me a better ui to customize it myself.

Calamares does not equal EndeavourOS or Arch for that matter. It is a package maintained by the calamares devs. If you really want to see these changes made you should really pose the question to them not here.

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The partitioning doesnā€™t set up /home unless you do it manually and if you do itā€™s right there for you to see. I donā€™t understand why you wouldnā€™t know that it is what you want if you are doing it manually. :thinking:

Cause I might be a first time installer, I might have had to stop and come back later, the info is relevant and is even show just too late on the installation process on my opinion.

Anyway we can abandon the topic as I reported upstream: https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues/2279

Honestly, even though I do understand, to some extent, the point your making, sort of, the manual custom installation is not something that first time installer will opt for. They are more inclined to choose the user/beginner friendliness of the automatic installation offered in the GUI installer.

The manual install with custom partition scheme is geared towards more experienced users who have at least a basic understanding about partitioning, partition schemes, boot modes, mount points, partition flags etc. and are willing and able to read documentation/WiKi in case of doubts.

Speaking for myself, I am yet to see a first time installer who have gone through a manual custom installation to get their system installed. There might be one or some out there but I havenā€™t had the pleasure to know them.

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Now you have Hi! Joking aside since I spent the time end effort to do my research before jumping into linux 8 years ago (damn time flies) I have always manually partitioned my installs. Why? because it is easier to have separate root and home partitions so in the event of some major breakage (usually self inflicted) you can just reinstall the os using the existing home.

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As others have written, it is generally assumed that when a user knows enough to want to do a custom partitioning scheme, that user should be familiar with the process. Conversely, if a user does not know what mount points should be assigned, the assumption is that they are best served by the automatic partitioning layout.

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Distros could set the automatic scheme to create a seperate /home partition by defaultā€¦ i bet it would be possible to ad dit as an option same like the dropdown foer swap/swapfile options.
But every extra Option ads mainly one thing for unexperienced users C o n f u s i o n . . . .

I am delighted to make your acquaintance! Your route to your first Linux installation is truly exceptional. Perhaps one of those exceptions that prove the rule.

Myself, I just jumped head first into Linux with an automatic installation of Ubuntu (my first Linux like many others). A couple of installations later and after spending some time in a couple of Linux forums, I started to experiment with custom partitioning.

Nowadays, I just put everything on a single partition or subvolume (if using btrfs). My personal data and configs get backed up both internally and externally so in case of a total disaster, I just reinstall the system and restore the data. I tend more and more to practice the idea of ā€œless is moreā€ in my installations and keep things pretty close to vanilla.

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Honestly i believe this is the larger problem that many users donā€™t understand much about partitioning, partition schemes, boot modes, mount points, partition flags. But having said that there are distros out there that even causes me confusion with their manual partitioning set up in their installer or the auto partitioning setup sometimes and i have to think what are they doing? :wink: EOS is not one of them. Itā€™s pretty clear in my opinion. KISS ā€¦

@joekamprad

By the way, does Calamaresā€™ manual partitioning and installation support the ESP to be mounted at
/boot or /efi?

I ask this because mounting ESP at /boot/efi seems to be discouraged by Arch (ArchWiki):

See the note here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition#Typical_mount_points

the holy grale :church: :crazy_face:

But its this: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/3757#issuecomment-234290236

And we do use /efi on systemd-boot installs (default set option) and would do the same for grub installs if it would easily work like that but at least with the current way we use calamares it is not possible to set /efi for grub installs.
@dalto can tell exactly :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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:smile:

I had Grub in mind (I should have stated that explicitly).

Thanks for the clarification!

Calamares requires you to mount the ESP at whatever location the distro specifies. So it can be any path, but it is fixed by the distro.

EndeavourOS has added customizations that change that path based on the bootloader specified. So if you pick systemd-boot, it must be mounted on /efi. If you pick grub, it must be mounted at /boot/efi.

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Maybe we need a little wiki on this?