Technically our main Jira is public and searchable, but even for myself it is not always easy to navigate.
So I created a small public Shortlist for the most discussed issues for now at Jira
Let’s see for how long I can maintain it in some useful state.
And the fix versions are obviously just a hopeful planning, not a commitment.
For the more flexible partitioning - i recorded the use case, but we will need to talk more about it.
Upd: I do hope that in the future we will find a way to show such things in Forgejo somehow. But for now between Jira and Bugzilla being on its way out, Jira wins.
Is it maybe useful to create the “common anaconda issues” as a topic in Discourse or something like that? Or alternatively, give you temporarily a #common-anaconda-issue tag in ask.fedora and create a topic for each case (I would need to talk to the team before I could do that but I assume it would be ok).
I never worked with Jira to be honest, but it sounds like it’s more complicated (=time intensive) than writing a post with a sentence in Discourse. And to some extent, trusted community members could help you moderate it here (e.g., tl3+, some of your collaborators are also group members of a Discourse team, etc.).
That’s just some thoughts that could be developed in some direction (maybe we have other eligible tools than discourse too), but I assume this is a project that will accompany us for quite some time, and finding something that can be maintained by you, without adding more to your workload than it reduces, might be worth to be evaluated. So that’s more for you and your team than for us I can be happy with the jira link you provided and share it with users who come up with related issues ^^
Supplement to ensure we’re on the same page: a tag in Discourse can be linked with a URL, the same way as a topic. So a user would with the link always get a page with all existing topics of the very tag, by default sorted by time (last post).
I very much like the Common Issues tracked currently at Fedora Ask category.
But I think these two things - common issues in the forum and the Jira board I created are two different tasks which should work together, but not replace one another.
Basically Common Issues of Ask Fedora is a tool for the community and specifically folks working with user support and QA on Fedora side to track those issues and help each other. It is up to community to decide what goes into that list. And as members of the community we are all encouraged to contribute to it. You don’t need to ask Anaconda devs or POs opinion if the issue is common or not. You tell us, when it is common.
As a team PO though I should use that information as an input and incorporate it in the team planning work. And the Jira board I created is a way for me to acknowledge for which of the items it has been done. Using it I say - yes, we heard about those and this is how they are reflected it in our current development processes.
Then the health check would be to see how much discrepancy we get between Common Issues as seen by community and the Jira stuff the team uses for prioritization. Ideally as little as possible, but time will tell.
AFAIK, the philosophy of the new webUI is “let the system decide, I do not want to touch that thing”. Therefore, they hid the more complicated stuff in the hamburger menu so that new users are not confused with many options. However, if you are a power user, you have the tools to do most of the stuff, including RAID configuration and so on.
I do not understand your disappointment, because you require full control over all the partitions, but you do not want to deal with the boot partition. As a power user, creating a boot partition is a matter of 15 seconds on a BIOS computer, and maybe 30 on an EFI one.
I do not think the “new user” experience should be anything beyond selecting a disk to install Fedora to (maybe shrink Windows) and hit Install.
Anything else should be reserved for people who know what they are doing and I am sure that if anybody needs a specific partition layout, they probably know they need a boot partition, too. By the way, if you try and use the partition manager in WebUI, you will see that it gives you info on what partitions you will need.
To be fair, the old Anaconda had such an option to modify a proposed partition layout, which provides benefits even to people who know what they are doing, if not anything else, at least in terms of time gained from adjusting the layout as opposed to defining it from scratch.
Further, even among power users there might be some who have missed the information about the newly recommended 2GB size of /boot, and they could end up creating a custom partition layout with size of /boot 1GB or less, only to find out later when they start having issues.
Several new users come to Fedora Discord asking for help with the new Anaconda Every Day. I can’t remember a single case of someone asking for help with the old one.
I agree with OP 100%. I had also posted about the partitioning issue in the past:
The current situation is that you either have to configure from scratch or accept a mystery default.
Agreed. Having the option to edit the default doesn’t take away from anything else and it can help users.
For completely new users, I agree. But there is a middle ground between new user and partition expert which isn’t served by the current UI. For example, in my case I just want to change from btrfs to ext4. This doesn’t require knowledge of boot partitions, but with the current installer I have to look it up and potentially make mistakes when setting it up from scratch.
As I mentioned above - this option has been considered and we actually have ideas on how it might be implemented. It doesn’t require a special edit mode, rather we need to add the choice between one of the predefined schemas - BTRFS, LVM, EXT4.. in the default partitioning approach.
But the choice between different types of pre-defined autopartitioning schemas is much easier to implement then a process of applying some default first, then allowing edits to it in a meaningful way, but not touching specific aspects, like the /boot setup.
So @rhea 's request is much more demanding and involved than yours. It is valid, but when the prioritization needs come, it will hardly win.
Anaconda is an OS installer, not a disk management suite. Your specific VM edge cases and personal partitioning preferences are simply out of scope.
The goal is a stable, automated install for the majority, not a “magic wand” for every niche storage configuration. If the defaults don’t suit you, the manual cmd works too or “extra tool”.
bring back deprecated UI just to save you a few clicks on a mount point - no please.
I believe the potential users who actually stay with the installer just want to wipe the disk and reinstall.
Even though I know these aren’t options I use, to accommodate everyone, when creating the right partitions with “Use Entire Disk” and go ahead, in addition to the encryption options, could you also show an expert option (perhaps in red and making it clear that it’s not recommended) where you can modify the various partitions set up, like if I want the home partition in btrfs xd to be ext4!? Or add an option to “To the Storage Editor” to automatically create all the partitions Fedora needs and then modify the file system and partition as they wish.
But I admit, for a user who doesn’t worry about file systems, Anaconda is fine like this!
You seem to have missed this^ - it’s not “my personal preferences” - it’s more than one person asking for help with it every day. There isn’t even proper documentation linked on how to manually partition the boot, what are the requirements - for instance the changes to the 1gb/2gb boot, etc, people can’t find GOOD resources (maybe that could be improved as well?)
Me personally? I actually had no other choice but to install btrfs with the silly root/home split on a laptop[1] and I already had to roll back snapshots - both mounts - at the same time. Very silly. I find this split quite counter-productive.
[1] GPD MicroPC2 with a default-portrait tablet display, which doesn’t scale the installer correctly. (Neither the old nor the new for that matter). And I can’t use the storage editor properly in either. Quite literally had to tab-nav-enter out of the screen and hope that I’m on the “continue” button and not the “quit” one. But hey I’m not gonna complain about this because this is actually a niche device - unlike a VM - or any other regular laptop all the folks come asking for help with.
I think that it should be an option to “auto-create boot” and “let user do the rest” - and as a senior engineer in multiple programming fields (including Red Hat) I dare say that it certainly sounds like it could fit into any evening of my “scope” if it was my project and I knew what’s where. If I wasn’t dealing with visa and other life-threatening issues, I’d be happy to PR this myself at the cost of much more than just one evening given that it’s not my project. Alas here we are - I’ll focus on packaging a particular driver missing in Fedora for my niche laptop because it’s unlikely that anyone else will be able to do that for the obvious hw restriction.
Hold on why am I even replying to a fresh new account I can’t find anything about? At what capacity are you replying here when you say “out of scope”? I know bookwar, if she said that it’s out of scope, I’d take it. But this is a.. fishy troll bait or something, isn’t it?
By default, a Workstation installation has the following disk layout:
Role
Filesystem
Mount Point
Default Size
EFI System Partition
FAT 32
/boot/efi
600M
Boot Partition
ext4
/boot
2G
Root Subvolume
Btrfs
/
Rest
Home Subvolume
Btrfs
/home
Rest
It is documented, just missing the size. Feel free to tell the Discord community to make changes and add such interesting info by helping maintain the Docs. A link direct to the manual from the installer would help to sort such things out.
I didn’t read through all but if I get it right, you refer to a Discord channel. I share some concerns about Anaconda, so I’m not rejecting that there are issues or so. But I doubt that an inofficial Discord channel is representative as large parts of the community are unlikely to focus on Discord given its privacy and proprietary issues. Also, most cannot access the data you refer to, but must rely on you as summarizing secondary source.
When referring to / using data it might be useful to use that of, or at least immediately available to, the community (unless there is Discord bridge or so you can refer to in order to review cases and evaluate them?).
Again, I’m not arguing any of your data or derivations are wrong, but it is nothing we can work with that way.
Although it would be an interesting question if the members of the Fedora Discord channel are representative for (or are themselves) any particular user group of Fedora, and if or how far they differ from others. But I guess we ain’t able to reliably collect / evaluate such data, so I assume we have to remain more generally with what is representative, and what we can do about specific/concrete issues that come up.
As far as it concerns the partitioning, the issue is known, and hopefully, the GUI will be updated soon to avoid users keep thinking there is no partitioning.
However, in general, I think it would be useful if people test the partitioning tool of anaconda: I have not yet had the time, but given that me and many others seem to not have found it at all, there is a realistic chance it has never been tested in the expected depth, neither from a UX perspective nor for bugs etc.
The “we” here includes “me” - as a former redhatter with 10 years of contributions to Fedora project close to the council, commops, and packaging. If you have a problem with their privacy policy or other legal stuff, you have “me” for that. I am to represent the Discord community “here.” Frankly/honestly, I stopped engaging in the core Fedora contributors community not only because of life events, but also lack of motivation due to exactly these kinds of opinions trying to exclude vast, vast majority of Fedora end users.
As much as you’d like Discuss or Matrix to be the first line of “defense” in helping new users, that is not happening even in my wildest dreams. People go to Discord first, Reddit second, everything else after that - especially new Linux users who need the most help. An end user does not care about the core principles of Fedora project. They just want a reliable OS and they will use whatever platform all of their friends are on - Discord.
And no, I can’t exactly gauge the amount of people having this or that issue, because of the nature of the platform - it’s a real time chat and I have a life. But the very few glances per day that I do get, I can see the issues - and we can safely assume that there are a lot more occurrences that I did not see between the thousands of messages every day:
However, in general, I think it would be useful if people test the partitioning tool of anaconda:
Yes, I totally agree. Thorough testing is always useful.
I have not yet had the time,
Maybe, if you had some time for exploration, you’d see that the new Anaconda is able to create various partitioning scenarios.
but given that me and many others seem to not have found it at all, there is a realistic chance it has never been tested in the expected depth, neither from a UX perspective nor for bugs etc.
The Fedora Quality (as well as the Anaconda team) perform a bunch of various tests for the new Anaconda, no less than it was performed for the old Anaconda.
I am not an Anaconda developer so I cannot give you all the reasons why the new Anaconda was introduced but for what I know, the old design could not provide any more flexibility (nor safety) for the future.
I never said anything else, but no QA can guarantee to get all bugs It’s a too complex technology. I found some bugs and reported them so that the team can work with, though my tests did not involve the partitioning tool for mentioned reasons
And since there has been exploratory testing from many sides about anaconda, and since we know now that people from the exploratory testing might have not tested the partitioning (that was elaborated earlier above), it is worth to consider that correspondingly.
I stopped engaging in the core Fedora contributors community not only because of life events, but also lack of motivation due to exactly these kinds of opinions trying to exclude vast, vast majority of Fedora end users.
This feels quite offensive. The Fedora community uses various means to enable its users to share their opinions as well as test new stuff and provide comments and possibly RFE’s. You, as a long term Fedora contributer, should know about them, because they have not changed for at least a couple of years.
I understand that the new UI might feel different and confusing, but being overly critical about it does not help anybody. It will definitely not help new users. If your new users need guidance on new Anaconda, let them come here and ask. We will gladly help them to partition their disks accordingly.
Your suggestion to create boot partitions and leave the rest to the users might or might not be relevant, I do not want to judge it here. However, I would expect you to open a Bugzilla report (the Anaconda team is usually very helpful) and discuss it there. This is the only way you can make such change happen. I am sure you know that, as a long time Fedora contributor.
Nobody says it can. However, I can assure you that Anaconda gets tested on a daily basis. If more community wants to join, they are very welcome.
we know now that people from the exploratory testing might have not tested the partitioning (that was elaborated earlier above), it is worth to consider that correspondingly.
I have read the whole thread and I could not figure out a partitioning scenario that users would not be able to achieve with the new UI, except for I-am-not-sure-about-the-size-of-the-boot-partition one.
If you have such scenario, please let me know and I will test it for you.
no please.