Really nice! That can be improved even further if either the Installer or the DriveSetup app could do all the necessary empty drive setup procedures in one click, after asking user if they want a “recommended setup” (vs. a custom one) and allowing them to select between GPT or MBR partition map.
p.s.: sorry for off-topic, but is there a ticket to rename “Intel Partition Map” to “MBR Partition Map”? The former term is used only within Haiku, and imho it just contributes to the user’s confusion. If there’s no ticket I’ll gladly create one.
No, also because the second term is incorrect.
BSD partition layouts can also use MBR, and so can GPT.
In fact the “standard” installation you propose is already in the works, and it will use GPT. I’m not going to ask a question in the easy installer that users can’t answer : D
More correct would be “MBR partitioning scheme”, and that’s the term most widely used in the industry (together with variants like “MBR partition table” or “DOS partition table”). GPT partitioning scheme includes a protective or hybrid MBR partition table for legacy reasons. Nevertheless, my point was that almost no one outside Haiku world uses the “Intel Partition Map” term (just try googling it with the quotes present). It’s confusing and also factually incorrect, because the MBR partitioning scheme wasn’t invented by Intel but by IBM. And Intel actually invented the GPT scheme as part of the EFI 1.02 specification.
Well, that’s the right thing to do. It will still be able to boot in BIOS mode, right?
p.s.: should we extract the discussion to a separate topic?
Out of curiosity, will we create a hybrid MBR partition table? Or will the Haiku MBR boot loader be GPT aware?
Rod Smith (the author of rEFInd and gdisk) mentions a few possible computer-specific issues in Legacy BIOS Issues with GPT, but states that in general it should work fine nowadays.
I’m not quite sure how it is done currently. I’d basically copy what the usb-image one does now. I Assume it is gpt aware, but i have not checked to be honest. : )
There two unrelated, but usually used together things:
Computer firmware: BIOS or EFI. This is about how computer boots.
Disk partitioning scheme: MBR or GPT. This is about how computer disk can be divided.
BIOS and MBR are older, EFI and GPT are newer. The combination of older (BIOS+MBR) is usually used together as well as the combination of newer (EFI+GPT). But there is no technical obstacle of using other combinations: BIOS+GPT or EFI+MBR. This is technically impossible in Windows because of deliberate limitation of Windows setup. I personally successfully tested all possible combinations in Haiku.
If you installed Haiku in EFI system with EFI bootloader (*.efi file) and then switch the system to legacy BIOS mode, Haiku may not boot if its partition does not get partition bootloader, which is accomplished with makebootable tool. This tool is automatically run when you install Haiku on MBR partition, but I am not sure it is also run if you install Haiku on GPT partition. In case it does not boot, just boot from installation media and run makebootable <haiku-partition> manually from Terminal.
The GPT partitioning scheme is (can be done) backward-compatible with MBR to some extent, so OSes aware only of MBR can see fake MBR partitions (up to 4) on real GPT partitioning scheme (which defaults to up to 128, but can be extended). This is called hybrid partition table. Usually the partitioning tools when create GPT scheme create it in hybrid mode.