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Formatting the partition(s) your OS is installed on is the uninstallation method. Uninstalling from the disk implies that you'll reuse the existing filesystem o

Formatting the partition(s) your OS is installed on is the uninstallation method. Uninstalling from the disk implies that you'll reuse the existing filesystem on the computer. Each of your named OSes has different preferences as to which filesystem they will run on, each filesystem with different capabilities and expectations. Windows - NTFS, OS X - APFS and HFS+, Linux - depending on which flavour you choose. Thus an uninstallation program isn't really much use, because the installation of anything new should blow that away. Or is it you wish that your computer had a bootstrap program when you powered it on which would source an installation image (for Windows, OS X, whatever Linux flavour you prefer)? To that last one Apple machines do offer this in a limited fashion in the form of "Internet Recovery", plug in a blank disk into a Mac or delete the GPT on your SSD and it will offer to connect to wifi/ethernet to download the installation image for either the version of OS X it shipped with, or alternatively the version last installed (I cannot recall which). Though of course it won't help source any installation media of the other OS families. This installation image is a cut down version of OS X which will provide just enough drivers to get the system functional, the disk drive formatting tools, a command line interface with a number of basic system tools to troubleshoot with, and a functioning web browser.

londons_explore 6y ago
> Formatting the partition(s) your OS is installed on is the uninstallation method. Except it isn't... Start with a dual boot windows and linux system, and delete the linux partition... And suddenly windows won't boot! Or with some UEFI setups, leaves linux as a default boot option that half boots linux and then won't complete because it can't mount the root filesystem. It's just poor design. I'm imagining something more like the UEFI menu having a "Right click, Delete" option next to each bootable OS. Clicking delete would run that OS's uninstaller code and refresh the menu. You could likewise have a "Add new OS" button in the UEFI firmware where you can select from a list of available OS's to download from the net, or provide your own URL to an iso or some installation metadata file.
- Tsiklon 6y ago
  Your problematic example seems like a limitation coming from implementation rather than a technical problem. Forgive me if I’m incorrect but on most UEFI based systems shouldn’t the boot loader and all it’s dependencies live in the FAT32 EFI filesystem? I know GRUB2 (which tends to be the most frequently shipped Linux bootloader for the major distros) is self contained in that regard; boot stanzas pertaining to Windows just point at Windows’ `boot.efi`, with the GRUB chain-loading that EFI program. Deleting the Linux partitions your using should not affect that Windows entry. Of course, it will knacker your Linux entries; though depending on how your distro does things, if the kernel and initial ramdisk are in the EFI you may get dumped into an emergency prompt on the root of the initial ramdisk (your “half-boot” example) and have the kernel itself tell you it can’t find the filesystems it’s supposed to use as the system root. But if GRUB can’t find the kernel (as in the case where the kernel is on another filesystem) it should tell you it can’t find it and dump you back to the menu, to choose how to proceed with this new information. Ubuntu’s implementation of GRUB as one example includes a menu option to bring you to your UEFI configuration menu, where you may be able to an alternative bootloader program or boot from another storage medium. Of course none of these things are new-user or non-technical-user friendly. I do agree with you that these are poor user experiences, and that the low level user experience should be improved. But in certain cases - the half-boot example, this is actually very useful as a last resort troubleshooting stage. Now I can’t speak for all UEFI implementations because many are garbage and barely functional, but most decent implementations do allow you to delete bootloader entries from them either from the “bios” menu or via “efibootmgr” on a Linux live disk - that said, this doesn’t delete the partitions underneath An additional item of note is that most operating systems at install time treat themselves as first class citizens at best (Linux), or the only operating system to be installed on the machine (Windows). There isn’t likely to be much incentive for the developers to improve that.

londons_explore 6y ago

> Formatting the partition(s) your OS is installed on is the uninstallation method. Except it isn't... Start with a dual boot windows and linux system, and delete the linux partition... And suddenly windows won't boot! Or with some UEFI setups, leaves linux as a default boot option that half boots linux and then won't complete because it can't mount the root filesystem. It's just poor design. I'm imagining something more like the UEFI menu having a "Right click, Delete" option next to each bootable OS. Clicking delete would run that OS's uninstaller code and refresh the menu. You could likewise have a "Add new OS" button in the UEFI firmware where you can select from a list of available OS's to download from the net, or provide your own URL to an iso or some installation metadata file.

Tsiklon 6y ago
Your problematic example seems like a limitation coming from implementation rather than a technical problem. Forgive me if I’m incorrect but on most UEFI based systems shouldn’t the boot loader and all it’s dependencies live in the FAT32 EFI filesystem? I know GRUB2 (which tends to be the most frequently shipped Linux bootloader for the major distros) is self contained in that regard; boot stanzas pertaining to Windows just point at Windows’ `boot.efi`, with the GRUB chain-loading that EFI program. Deleting the Linux partitions your using should not affect that Windows entry. Of course, it will knacker your Linux entries; though depending on how your distro does things, if the kernel and initial ramdisk are in the EFI you may get dumped into an emergency prompt on the root of the initial ramdisk (your “half-boot” example) and have the kernel itself tell you it can’t find the filesystems it’s supposed to use as the system root. But if GRUB can’t find the kernel (as in the case where the kernel is on another filesystem) it should tell you it can’t find it and dump you back to the menu, to choose how to proceed with this new information. Ubuntu’s implementation of GRUB as one example includes a menu option to bring you to your UEFI configuration menu, where you may be able to an alternative bootloader program or boot from another storage medium. Of course none of these things are new-user or non-technical-user friendly. I do agree with you that these are poor user experiences, and that the low level user experience should be improved. But in certain cases - the half-boot example, this is actually very useful as a last resort troubleshooting stage. Now I can’t speak for all UEFI implementations because many are garbage and barely functional, but most decent implementations do allow you to delete bootloader entries from them either from the “bios” menu or via “efibootmgr” on a Linux live disk - that said, this doesn’t delete the partitions underneath An additional item of note is that most operating systems at install time treat themselves as first class citizens at best (Linux), or the only operating system to be installed on the machine (Windows). There isn’t likely to be much incentive for the developers to improve that.