All's Well That Ends Well (Mostly)
Sometimes you do things, when you really should know better.
I decided since this was a relatively slow Saturday to see if I could get Fedora 12 Alpha installed on my HP 2133 Mini-Note. The problem is, they still don't have a VIA Chrome 9 display driver, so the LiveCD won't boot. I have installed previous Fedora releases on the 2133 by using the DVD installer in text mode, rather than a LiveCD, then after the installation is complete just copy an openchrome driver over from one of the other Linux partitions which has a compatible version of X.org. No big deal, actually...
Everything started out just fine, I booted the DVD with "text" added to the options, and the text installer came up. When I got to the step where I have to choose the installation target, I only had three choices - "Use entire disk", "Use free space" and "Replace existing system". None of those looked right, but I didn't see the "Manual specification" option that I have used previously... anyway, at the very beginning of the installation it had seen that I currently have Fedora 10 installed, and offered to upgrade that for me... so I thought it must be offering to "replace existing system" on that partition... but I should have known better. I really should have known better...
Sure enough, when it was done installing I discovered that it had wiped everything on the disk except the XP partition, and replaced all the rest with one huge partition for itself. Eeek! That's 10 or so Linux partitions flushed with one fell swoop! Wow, am I ever glad that the 2133 is not my primary system, and to be honest all of those partitions were disposable... But still, that means I have to wipe the Fedora 12 installation, repartition the disk, and reinstall all of those other distributions... Sigh.
I try to be an optimist, and look on the bright side. This will give me a chance to rethink how I had all of those installed, and which ones I really want to install. But even Pollyanna might struggle to find something to be glad about in this.
jw 5/9/2009