Fedora 18 Beta slips again

Anaconda 18.23, in the net install (http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/qa/18/20121101_f...), has revised and improved the partitioning segment. On the second screen, after you highlight the drive(s) to be used, there is an option to choose LVM, Plain, or BTRFS. When I selected Plain, and the opted for manual partitioning, it seemed the intent was for me to highlight each existing partition and reuse and/or modify it. I.e., click on and existing /home partition and gain access to a partition editor. That didn't happen in my case because the installer crashed when I clicked on the name of an existing partition.

After filing a bug report, I rebooted and opted for an LVM install, manually reclaiming all the space on the drives. That triggered "Automatic partitioning" and the rest of the install. (The net install is quite fast. I don't know if this was a design intent or just the broadband gods smiling on me, or both, but it's nice.)

LVM installation worked fine. Maybe it's time for me to learn to love LVM.

I didn't see any place in the installer where the drives are identified in traditional fashion as /dev/sda, etc. Regardless, I'm looking for a way to select an individual drive and either edit an existing partition table or create a new one, select Ext4 or whatever, give it a mount point, etc.

I *like* Anaconda's new look and agree 100% that tackling partitioning is a challenge, especially once you go beyond the "everything on a single drive" notion. At that point, I think you just have to assume the user can handle things and offer the traditional interface.

I'm not sure if the flow through is precisely right yet. (Why am I asked for a root password as the partitions are being created and formatted, with that window obscuring things? ) It took a while for me to figure out that I'm meant to click on the icons (duh). That is, as much of the configuration as possible is done for you and presented as something of a fait accompli, so it didn't occur to me that by clicking on, say, the Language icon I could edit that choice.

All these things are inevitable in pre-release when something as significant as the installer is being redesigned. It's looking to be a very nice iteration of Fedora.