Comment 11 for bug 628087

Having to change the hostname post-install is made more awkward by the fact that it's not just one place it needs to be changed. At the very least you need to change it in /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname, but also some programs (I think postfix is one that springs to mind, but there might be others less server-oriented) like to make copies of whatever the hostname is at the time of installation, making it much more likely to have an inconsistent setup.

Having multiple computers with the same name certainly has opportunities to be a real pain, especially when casually sharing files between computers on a network ("which alan-desktop do I click on?"). And while I understand wanting to make the install process easy and streamlined, I think Lucid had it just right - set a default, but allow it to be changed right there and then. Hide it behind something if necessary, but don't remove it.

I think this should be higher priority than it is. It's a trivial UI change (if it's time that's the problem, I know I'd be happy to write a patch), and more importantly the consequence of not fixing it is frustrating installs for anybody who might slightly care about this setting for 6 months. It's fine to say it'll be fixed in the next release, but that doesn't help for the half a year in the meantime!