(Solved)Installed Mint as only OS on Drive - OK?

[mdiemer]

I installed Xfce as the only OS on a drive, with no partitioning. Is this not a good idea? I damn sure will not be putting Windows on this drive. I may put another Linux system on it, in which case I I would simply install alongside Mint. But I seem to recall having heard installing Linux this way is not a good idea. Why would this be true, if so?

[Moem]

Well, it's generally a good idea to keep your data partition separate from the one your OS runs in. This keeps your data safer and more easily recoverable in case something goes rwong with your OS.
A decent way to do this on Linux is to make a root partition and a separate home partition. This is something that I really wish were offered as a ready-made option while installing Mint!

[srq2625]

A decent way to do this on Linux is to make a root partition and a separate home partition. This is something that I really wish were offered as a ready-made option while installing Mint!

Is this not the default configuration: /swap, /, /home - the first option, selected by default, by the installer if no other O/S is detected on the drive?

[Moem]

As far as I've seen so far, a default installation gives you root and swap partitions, and no separate home partition. It only creates two partitions, not three.

[mdiemer]

OK, here's the setup according to Disk Manager:

File System: Partition 1: 494 GB, ext4
Extended Partition (2): 6.4 GB
Swap Partition (5): 6.4 GB
Ye Old Free Space: 1.1MB

What should I do to make this a better setup?

[buteman]

Yes that should be fine.
Use a live DVD to use gparted to shrink the partition to about 50 gig and create a new partition in the free space.
Reboot the PC
Mount the new partition to /mnt then

Code: Select all

cp -pR /home  /mnt

then edit /etc/fstab
so the new partition mounts to /home.
Reboot and you should be good to go.
If you want to put another distro on the hard disc it might be worth making you new partition smaller so you end up leaving free space to put the new distro on.
Also I do remember that some distros use the same starting UID and GID as each other and so if you create the same user names on each one you could use the same /home for both distros but it's a long long time since I did this

[austin.texas]

I installed Xfce as the only OS on a drive, with no partitioning. Is this not a good idea? I damn sure will not be putting Windows on this drive. I may put another Linux system on it, in which case I I would simply install alongside Mint. But I seem to recall having heard installing Linux this way is not a good idea. Why would this be true, if so?

You can install another linux Operating System on the drive. I always have more than one.
To make room for it you can use the Gparted program on the live Mint DVD, as buteman said, and decrease the size of your 494 GB partition to 474 GB. That will give you 20 GB of free space (unallocated space). Create a new ext4 partition in that space. When you install, select that partition as your / (root) partition for your new OS.

[lgt791]

I normally have 3 partitions.

/ liunx lives here - about 30 gig
swap - 3 gig
Data - what ever is left in this case 450 gig

if i need to reinstall the os no need to worry about losing any data. Also if i ever need to put windows on this machine i can just use gparted live and delete the 2 linux partitions and create and format the one partition to ntfs. I also format my data partitions to ntfs because i still use winxp 2 machines and windows 7 one machine.

Just the way i do it. If i had no need for windows at all I would just format the data partition to ext4 and be do with it.

Hopes this gives a little idea of how it could be done.

[mdiemer]

I guess what I should have done is to select the option of creating logical partitions, when installing Mint. Now I have to figure out how do it after the fact, which I thought would be easy but isn't quite as easy as I thought. But I'll figure it out soon enough. Still open to any suggestions in the meantime!

[austin.texas]

I guess what I should have done is to select the option of creating logical partitions, when installing Mint. Now I have to figure out how do it after the fact, which I thought would be easy but isn't quite as easy as I thought. But I'll figure it out soon enough. Still open to any suggestions in the meantime!

Actually, it is not complicated at all. Boot your live Mint DVD or USB and open the Gparted program. That will allow you to resize and create partitions. Simply right-click on the partition or on the unallocated space to perform the tasks.

Gparted manual
Gparted tutorial
How to install with manual partitioning