Partition help for new install SSD+HDD[Solved]

[Snagletooth]

Hello.
I'm fairly new to Linux and am looking for a basic at-install partition scheme for SSD+HDD desktop rig. So far any searches involve either dual boots (not going to be a dual boot, just Linux Mint), rather overly complicated exotic setups involving raids and servers, or quickly devolved into arguments over semantics or debates over using this or that program or process and never getting around to answering the OP.

So I have a 500Gb SSD and 1Tb HDD. It's a daily driver. Games, genealogy, music, internet trolling, yada yada. The main game, which is my hard caveat, is Star Citizen. Due to lots of hard work by the LUG group there they have managed to get the game to work, while still in Alpha, on Linux (so it's time to move, yeehaw! Goodbye Windows!). It's a rather complicated setup though involving two Wine staging versions, 3.18 to run and 3.19 to update patches. Don't worry, Im not looking for advice on that topic, I keep up with the games LUG group for specifics on that.

Quite frankly, most of my programs, files and games don't really benefit much, if at all, from an SSD enough to take up the space. Star Citizen, however, *has* to be on an SSD. Even in Windows it actually won't run from an HDD. Also it's currently sitting at minimum spec of 16Gb RAM. A few have managed to get it to play on 8, but not many. Even at 16Gb many struggle, and Im always redlined at 14Gb, and often run up to 20Gb. If I hit 24 crash out. So yea..think I might actually need swap even with 16Gb's of RAM, at least until they get into Beta and start optimizing it.

So I do know that with Linux you often don't get to decide where a program will install itself. Not being sure where my programs will go means I need a fair amount of flexibility to move things around as I go.

So, for the initial install I'm thinking
/ SSD
/Home (on SSD so I can mount the HDD, then move the contents later?)
swap (SSD or HDD? I might actually need it)

As far as any other options not sure if I need them at install. I've seen them often suggested but they also seem to have limited situation uses. Not really sure I would need them at initial setup. I could always make partitions for them later if I need them.
/var
/usr
/opt (I have read that some programs can install there, but even still it's useful as a place where I can move Star Citizen and it WINE dependencies separate from everything else, if possible)

I'm not needing a "final" partition, because, as I said, I don't even know yet where many of my programs will install themselves, but I want to have the options to be able to move, adjust and re-partition later as i figure it out. I know some partitions under certain conditions can't be messed with and your stuck with what you started with.

[AndyMH]

I'd keep it simple, format everything ext4, separate root and home partitions in the SDD and mount the HDD as something like /home/you/data. I have a swap partition = same size as RAM, but next time round I wouldn't bother and let mint manage a swap file.

[Snagletooth]

I appreciate the advice. Simple yet flexible is what I am aiming for.
I wasn't aware that Linux could do page file. As I understood it that was strictly a Windows thing. Is that an automatic function if I don't set up a swap partition or do I have to activate it in some way?

[AndyMH]

I wasn't aware that Linux could do page file.

Don't think it is present in mint <= 18.3.
Automatic in mint 19.x, if a swap partition is present it will use it, otherwise it will use a page file. Don't know whether the page file will live in the root or home partition as I've not used it. There is probably a setting somewhere to switch it on or off.

Note - have a similar setup to you in my laptop - 500G SDD + 2TB HDD, but I use the HDD purely for backup and have it mounted in /media (it's sat in a removable caddy in the ultrabay in the laptop where the DVD drive used to live).

[philotux]

By default the swapfile will be created under /.

[Snagletooth]

Alright, that'll work then.

Thanks for the quick replies everyone.