Separate /boot partition

If you are referring to the possibility to install / and /home to different physical disks, you are right.

You CAN however install / and /home to different partitions on the same disk.

Personally, I second the idea to make installation to different disks possible. However, MEPIS is meant to be as easy as possible for newcomers. For a new user, every extra option means extra complication. For more advanced users, creating an extra /home partition and changing the line in /etc/fstab is not very difficult. So it is a trade off.

But yes, it might have to be considered.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

You CAN have /boot on a separate partition. Don't ask me how though, since my brother installed it for me the very first time and he went through hell and back to create it, meanwhile complaining why the option wasn't there and yadda yadda.

So.. it IS possible, but it is a PITA.

I have 6.0 now, installed it myself, worked like a charm and in 15 minutes, instead of the two hours it took him LOL

You CAN however install / and /home to different partitions on the same disk.

Personally, I second the idea to make installation to different disks possible. However, MEPIS is meant to be as easy as possible for newcomers. For a new user, every extra option means extra complication. For more advanced users, creating an extra /home partition and changing the line in /etc/fstab is not very difficult. So it is a trade off.

But yes, it might have to be considered.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

No I was not referring to a separate / and /home partition, which Mepis does allow in the installation. I was referring to a separate / and /boot partition, which Mepis does not allow in the installation. There are very many people who find it useful to have /boot in its own boot partition and not within the / partition. This allows one to fix the /boot partition on a multi-boot machine so that even when upgrading from one version of a Linux distro to another, the /boot partition stays the same. Mepis is the only one of my Linux distro installations which does not allow specifying separate /boot and / partitions during installation. Instead it must be done manually after installation, which is a real PITA. Why the Mepis installation developer(s) insist on not upgrading their installation to allow the user setting up custom partition for Mepis to specify a separate /boot and / partition is something I do not understand, especially because the rest of the installation is so very good.

So.. it IS possible, but it is a PITA.

I have 6.0 now, installed it myself, worked like a charm and in 15 minutes, instead of the two hours it took him LOL

As you have said, it can of course can be done after installation, but it is a PITA to do it, but it can not be done during the installation program. T

he installation program should just allow one to choose a separate partition for /boot, and act accordingly. Currently the Mepis installation only allows separate partitions to be initially set for / and /home, while all other Linux distro installations which I have allow one to setup a separate partition for /boot also. I guess the Mepis installers just want to be "different" while being backwards in this one area.

No I was not referring to a separate / and /home partition, which Mepis does allow in the installation. I was referring to a separate / and /boot partition, which Mepis does not allow in the installation. There are very many people who find it useful to have /boot in its own boot partition and not within the / partition. This allows one to fix the /boot partition on a multi-boot machine so that even when upgrading from one version of a Linux distro to another, the /boot partition stays the same. Mepis is the only one of my Linux distro installations which does not allow specifying separate /boot and / partitions during installation. Instead it must be done manually after installation, which is a real PITA. Why the Mepis installation developer(s) insist on not upgrading their installation to allow the user setting up custom partition for Mepis to specify a separate /boot and / partition is something I do not understand, especially because the rest of the installation is so very good.

OK, I understand. I never really thought about it. Does e.g. Ubuntu have that option? Don't remember having seen it, but for me it is a non-issue. I don't really understand why you would want it, but then again, it is all a matter of preference.

Still, my wish to allow installation on different disks is unaffected

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

What carlops said is correct eldiener. It is possible to set up all sorts of disks/partitions/directories after installation. But beginning users get confused by all of the choices. That's why they are given a fairly straight-forward choice of "use the whole disk, or use the ramaining space" for installing Mepis.

If I want to do a custom disk structure, I put all my disks in, make a swap partition, and a single other partition of the right size for Mepis's "/" mount point. If I know where I want the other partitions and their sizes, I create them also, but do nothing with them. I get Mepis loaded, reboot, and log in as root and move stuff around, making appropriate changes to /etc/fstab. When logged in as root, into a konsole (or regular tty session) it's fairly easy to move everything to the new mount points. For my own paranoia/protection, I always rename the old directory before making a new directory for the mount point. Then I just use "cp -a /olddir /newdir".

Fairly easy for us, but utterly confusing to many a newbie

Jon

The ability to comfortably use a computer is directly proportional to desire to listen, learn, and experiment, and is inversely proportional to the fear, anger, and stubbornness that you show.