[NCLUG] disk drive partition designation

[Brian Wood]

William Greger wrote:
> Brian,
>
>   Thanks for your response.  I always like to understand the reason behind what's going on.
>
> Bill Greger
>   

Yeah, the change has caused some problems, especially for people
updating from earlier versions of Ubuntu.

In particular it seems grub was not getting updated properly to reflect
the new drive name(s). Also /etc/fstab was not getting properly updated.

This is an example of how the kernel developers are, in my opinion, not
thinking of the problems they cause for users.

I liked the old days when we had separate kernel trees for development
and mainstream use. If you wanted to be on the bleeding edge you used an
odd series kernel, if you wanted stability you stuck with an even series
one.

Linus says he likes the present system, where the developers whack away
on the same tree as the stable users. Linus says this makes kernel
development "smoother". I'm sure this is true, but I'm also sure it
would be even smoother if all of us pesky users switched to Windows.

Using the same basic designators for SCSI, IDE, USB and F/W is confusing
IMHO, leading to an increased possibility of wiping out a hard drive
when you thought you were just erasing a thumb drive.

Oh well, probably we should be using drive labels in any case. The way
drives are labeled in Linux has always been a problem, with drive
designations changing any time you add or remove a drive. Those of us
with Solaris backgrounds really go crazy over that :-)

beww