Manual Partition in Ubiquity difficult to use due to Boot Loader text

Here's a screen shot showing what I'm talking about... this particular machine has one hard disk and 5 partitions already, so hunting down the right partition to use for this install is made a lot more difficult because I can't readily see the full partition table.

lucky you reported it instead of me, my working title for the bug was "manual partitioning screen sucks"

I'm here to manually partition not read up on the goings on in the boot loader world.

Is it possible to have maybe a question mark icon or something next to boot loader so people who don't know can click and read what is there?

This bug was fixed in the package ubiquity - 2.5.30

---------------
ubiquity (2.5.30) natty; urgency=low

  [ Evan Dandrea ]
  * Add an error message for apt-clone failing.
  * Do not consider Windows Recovery partitions in the list of operating
    systems.
  * Add unit tests, which can be run via ./tests/run or by building the
    package. To override a failing test causing the package build to
    fail, use the UBIQUITY_NO_TESTS environment variable.
  * Divert initctl around apt-clone to prevent packages with Upstart
    jobs from failing to be reinstalled.
  * Ensure that the partition description labels all wrap at the same
    point (LP: #741664).
  * Move test dependencies into build-depends. Thanks Colin Watson!
  * Move the apt-clone working directory into /var/log/installer at the
    end of installation (LP: #739492).
  * Set the next button back to its original label once done calculating
    its size.
  * Automatic update of included source packages: migration-assistant
    0.6.9, user-setup 1.28ubuntu14.

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Start debconf in ubiquity.i18n.reset_locale if it isn't already running
    (LP: #649895).
  * Remove grub_device_label from string_extended, now that the boot loader
    question is only asked from the partitioning page rather than a separate
    dialog (LP: #726740).
 -- Evan Dandrea <email address hidden> Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:30:33 +0100

@ Colin Watson,

Just following up on this. That does look better, we're basically back to what Maverick showed on that screen, and hopefully that will also help with the "window too large for the screen" bugs I've seen filed regarding netbooks and such.

But I have what may or may not be a silly suggestion. I realize we can't go back to what we had pre-Maverick, but ATM we still only show about 3 1/2 lines of devices for installation and I wonder if we could change something else to allow displaying at least 5 lines of devices.

I rather imagine that asking to remove the nearly useless graphic bar in that step would require intense debate with the design team, but how about reducing the font of "Allocate drive space"?

Perhaps a simpler approach, one I'd hope wouldn't require much debate between teams, is the redundancy of these two lines of text:

Boot loader (dark, bold font)
Device for boot loader installation: (less prominent font)

If we could eliminate the first line "Boot loader" and then set a bold font in the second, while maintaining the same window size, could that increase the number of devices displayed to at least 5?

I know none of this is easy for you and Evan. I truly hope you know that I'm only trying to ensure that everyones experience with Ubuntu is as great as mine has been since Gutsy :^)

I have a 17 inch screen and can't see the bugger. Must be fun on a tablet.

Hello Kansasnoob,

What are the chances we would swing by the same bug!

I agree completely in regards to "Boot loader" having "Device for boot loader installation:" right below it, completely redundant information, and could easily make up the extra pixels needed to extend to 4+ devices.

I tried to get into the ui files to muck around but couldn't anything, will have another look later.

Regarding the first iso-testing image for Natty Beta 2 my problem is the same as I described in post #4. It's better but we're still wasting space on large "fancy-pants" fonts, a GUI that no one using "advanced partitioning" is going to look at, and a redundancy about the boot-loader installation - all at the expense of displaying a truly adequate number of partitions which is the true purpose of that page :^(

OT and perhaps worthy of another report is the absence of the option to NOT install grub anywhere. Personally I don't care because I know it's perfectly safe to install grub to either / or /boot and obtain the same end result, but some feedback would be helpful ;^)

Erick,

The advanced partitioning page is being redesigned in 11.10, and will hopefully adequately address the issues you and others have raised. I'm not keen on making the page look inconsistent with the rest (reducing the font size) just to band-aid this, but I think it wont be necessary with the final design.

As always, you can track the progress on the installation design specification:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfkkjjcj_101gnkrpg5v#4_5_1_Automatic_partitioning_o_8475526086986065

I see with removing that one redundant line of text regarding bootloader installation that we're up to 4 1/2 lines of text in the actual device selection. Good enough for me, thanks a million for all of the hard work.