UX/Partitioner

From openSUSE

Reasons for change

• The current partitioning module in YaST is not suitable for beginners, although it is suitable for a sophisticated IT ecosystem
  • Hard to learn for non-experts
  • Non-intuitive wording and design
  • Too many buttons
• Simultaneous display of LVMs and partitions that are parts of LVMs
• Horizontal scrolling required for viewing details
• Modules for related tasks (iSCSI, LVM, Boot Loader) are separated from Partitioning Module

Personas

Christian Bowman

• 26 years
• student (social sciences)
• girl-friend
• hobbies: Photography, soccer, swimming, getting out with friends, movies
  
• computer experience:
  • MS Windows 98 SE, XP
  • is used to his windows apps
  • wants to know what equivalent apps he will have on Linux and how to find them
  • wants to learn how to use the system
    
• current OS: MS Windows XP
• computer use: Some picture editing, watching movies, office work for university, E-mail, internet for social networking, information (Spiegel.de) and fun (youtube), Games (Starcraft, Quake 3)
  
• goal: wants to find an alternative to MS Windows, because he doesn`t want to spend money on software programs and it is become more and more difficult to get them illegally for free; he wants to keep MS Windows for gaming and office work (documents have to run on university computers which uses MS Office); chooses openSUSE becaue it was included in a magazine
  
• tasks:
  • Dual boot openSUSE/MS Windows
  • Make sure during the installation that Windows has enough space on hard disc (Use Case #1)
  • Exchange data between openSUSE and MS Windows
  • After some time, when Christian buys himself a new, additional harddisc he wants to format it for Linux and MS Windows (Use Case #2)

Anne Clark

• 56 years
• son that is 17 years old
• not educated
• is a teacher who uses her computer at home
• has a Samsung notebook
• acquired computer skills on her own
• computer experience:
  • Windows 98
  • starting with openSUSE because she heard that Linux is more secure than Windows and that is important for her as she is doing online-banking and because her son told her, that Linux offers equal but cheaper solutions for office tasks and picture editing
• computer use: online banking, picture editing, open office, e-mail via Thunderbird
• goals: needs a computer that just works as she isn't experienced in using it
• tasks:
  • wants to keep her Windows partition
  • uses dual boot
  • wants to share data between Windows and Linux

Mathias Meyers

• 33 years old
• web developer
• single
• doesn`t have money
• computer experience:
  • more than 10 years of Linux expertiese
  • runs several Linux systems Solaris, Free BSD
• computer use: developing on bluefish web editor, testing his stuff on Apache, using php and mysql, looking for some new trends in web development
• goals: keep control over his issues (paranoid) and adjust software to his needs
• tasks:
  • multi boot between various linux distros
  • share most important data between OS
  • using RAID on a software level

Stefan Enderby

• 42 years old
• Oracle Data base administrator
• works for an advertisment company, where he takes care of 5 oracle enterprise data bases
• uses multi core machines
• computer experience:
  • Solaris
  • EAX
• computer use: installing standard oracle database server
• goals: things should just work because he has no time and no mood to bother himself with a lot of confusing configuration workflows.
• tasks:
  • uses 2 SATA discs as RAID 1
  • needs to distribute available storage for databases

Ihno Jones

• 47 years old
• Z-Series Admin
• using mainframe (computing center)
  • approx. Linux 120 guests
  • HDD: 1 - 30
  • 1 - 40 network cards
  • some guest are just router
• uses CLI for administration
• computer experience:
  • Linux
  • z/VM
• goals: whatever needs to be done should be possible
• tasks:
  • install linux in LPAR (Logische Partition)
  • install Linux on z/VM (sees only what is necessary ( >10))

=> LPAR lots of (n00 - n000) visible devices (discs/network cards)
=> Remote installation needed
=> machine should be expandable
=> Adding/Removing HDD and network cards
=> updates

Benchmarking

• EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System)
• GParted (Ubuntu 7.04)

Overview of partitioner during installation

Create new partition

Resize partition

Overview of partitioner during installation with pending actions

• Disc Druid (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
• VMware ESX Server 2.1
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003
• Paragon Partition Manager 8.0 Enterprise Server Edition
• Apple MacOS 10.4
• Manage Engine
• Adaptec Storage Manager Pro System
• Veritas

Requirements

• needs to be suitable for sophisticated IT environments
• integration of basic partitioning and LVM
• must work in text mode
• modular

Conclusions

• Non-experienced users like Anne
  • should be fine with auto-partitioning
• Little-experienced users like Christian
  • should be able to deal with the basic partitioning
• Experienced users like Ihno
  • should be able to do all kinds of partitioning and LVM stuff

Mock-ups

Ideas for the partitioner module in YaST

Ideas for a UI redesign-PDF

Ideas for partitioning dialog during installation