While installing a new test installation on /dev/hdc installer went and overwrote MBR on /dev/hda without asking me any questions or giving me an opportunity to prevent that action. In this particular case this destroyed a GRUB boot sector which was used by something else. Even if *I* know how to revert such pig-headness first time users may get into a sheer panic mode after that experience; especially if the other system happened to be NT or W2K and they will find out that they are unable to boot even from a floppy. My past "real-life" experience with situations of that sort is that the first reaction was to reformat Linux partition and think and ask questions later; thus making a recovery quite difficult. One is not winning Linux friends that way either. Michal michal
Workstation and Server installs have done this for ages as it avoids a question that new users don't understand (how to install lilo). For most users, this is the right thing to do. If you're advanced enough for this to be the wrong thing to do, you should know how to avoid it. (exper install or custom install)