Hello, dimosha.
I want to know the difference between this : /home ,/boot and / when i try to install linux mint.
First of all let met explain what
/home ,
/boot and
/ have got in common: they are all folders.
Now to the differences:Every Linux system will have at minimum one file system, the root file system. The root file system will be mounted under the folder
/.
Every Linux system will have folder named
/boot. It will hold the Grub2 bootloader files. In most cases
/boot will located on the same filesystem as
/. You can, however, create a dedicated filesystem for
/boot. In this case
/boot will be the folder where this filesystem is mounted.
Every Linux system will have folder named
/home. It will hold the home folders of all the user accounts that you create. The exception is the user root. His home folder willl be /root.
In a lot of cases, the folder
/home will be located on the same filesystem as the root folder
/. As this is likely to cause trouble when you want to re-install the current Mint version or to install a new Mint version from the scratch later on, it is often recommended to create a dedicated filesystem for
/home.
Note for users coming from Windows to Linux:What is called a filesystem on Linux, would be called a drive on Windows. The main handling difference between Windows drives and Linux filesystems is this: as a rule Windows assigns drive letters to its drives. Linux, however, does use mount points instead. A mount point is an empty folder where a filesystem is mounted.
i can make 2 partitions: one for the system into / and one for my folders into /home in order to have my documents safe to upcoming format. Is that true?
Yes, this is correct.
If you were installing Windows, you would install Windows on drive C: and put all the Users folders, C:\Users by default, on drive D: instead, i.e. you would have D:\Users instead.
On Linux, as mentioned before, you will have a large root filesystem, mounted under
/, where the operating system itself and the application software will be installed. Grant no less than 15 to 20 GB to the root file system. Else you will run out of available disk space on
/ sooner or later.
In order to have the users' home folders on a separate filesystem, you will have to create a second file system which will be mounted as
/home. How much disk space should be granted to this file system largely depends on the nature of the data which you will store there.
How exactly will i do it?
Assuming that you are setting up a new Linux system from the scratch, you can do so in the course of the installation process.
Even though it uses Mint 11 as an example, a good installation guide for Linux beginners can be found here:
Linux Mint User Guide, available in different languages, of course, in English, too:
Linux Mint User Guide (engl.).
On page 14 of this user guide, you will reach the stage where the Linux installation programme asks you how to prepare the available disk space for the new Linux installation. (Screenshot "Allocate drive space").
In order to separate the system, root filesystem mounted as
/, and the user home folders, mounted as
/home, you will have to select the third option
(*) Something else.
Selecting this option will give you access to
GParted. Inside
GParted you will have to define the filesystems that your Linux Mint installation will use, their sizes and their mount points.
The mentioned user guide rightly states that manually partitioning the future Linux system is a task for advanced users, not for beginners.
Without knowing the exact details of your harddisk, type, size, available free disk space, what you want to do, it is not possible to give a step by step
instruction. Too many factors have to be taken into account which we cannot simply know.
Provided you have got some experience in partitioning disk drives, you may like to read this GParted documentation,
GParted, very carefully and partition your disk during the Mint installation according to your needs.
i want to know is if i have to use (or it is obligated to use) swap memory in a smaller partition while i have 4 gb ram memory on my pc.
Yes. Trying to run Linux without giving it a swap partition is asking for trouble.
Kind regards,
Karl
ne for the system into / and one for my folders into /home in order to have my documents safe to upcoming format. Is that true? How exactly will i do it? Can anyone explain the difference between / and /boot? 
