Best Practice Manual Partitions

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hoofhearted4
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Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by hoofhearted4 »

Hi all,

I'm coming from Windows and my boot drive was partitioned in Windows. Moving to Linux I need to keep that second partition so I have to manually set up the Linux partitions within that "C:" Drive space. I've looked around for what people recommended for manual partitions but I've only found old articles and was sure if that info as still relevant. What I've found was:

500mb - Boot
20gb - root
x2 RAM - swap
Everything else - Home

Because I never installed anything directly to C: in windows, I always installed everything to other partitions and drives. I assume I'll continue that practice in Linux therefore not installing much to the Home drive though If I'm correct, in Linux the root drive is like windows C: and installing to home is already a seperate partition, so it's redundant, but it'll keep me organized the way I've already organized it. Since Linux is a much smaller footprint than Windows I can probably shrink that space down more and allocate more to the other partition on the drive since I won't be using the home partition, would that be accurate? Also I have 16gb RAM so I wasn't sure if a swap was still necessary or if that was something from smaller ram size days. Also I've also read that the boot drive isn't necessary so yea, just hoping to get up to date best practices on what to do.

Thanks everyone for helping a new guy with some questions.
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Moonstone Man
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by Moonstone Man »

hoofhearted4 wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:56 am 500mb - Boot
20gb - root
x2 RAM - swap
Everything else - Home
Don't create a separate boot partition because it will lead to trouble with space unless you keep your kernels cleaned up, and you don't need a swap partition either. 20GB for root is far too small. You should budget for 32-48GB, depending on what you plan to use Linux for. Alternatively, just install the whole lot into one partition of a size that suits your budget.
hoofhearted4
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by hoofhearted4 »

If that's the case, I'll just do a 50gb root and a 50gb home. There's 100gb free space so I cna just keep it as is. Should be more than enough space for either. Im not in a position where I need to keep it as minimum as possible.

Thank you so much!
RIH
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by RIH »

You could just use the 100GB as a single partition with no separate /Home.

If you split it up you are in danger of either having too little space in root & being unable to log into the system, or have unused space in root & then low on space in /Home..
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AndyMH
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by AndyMH »

A number of misconceptions :)

Linux is not windows and, with a few isolated instances, you cannot control where programs get installed. Executables tend to be installed in /usr/bin, librararies in /usr/lib, etc. A basic description of the linux filesystem:
https://www.linux.com/training-tutorial ... explained/

In addition, /home/you not only contains all your data files, it also contains all your config files (hidden files/folders that start with a .).

With respect to your partition scheme:
  • You don't need a boot partition if booting in legacy mode, if booting in UEFI mode you need an EFI partition, but as you will be installing dual boot with win, windows will have already created that. Maybe confusion here, way back when it was common to have separate /boot and / partitions. You still can, but no point, /boot is just another folder under /.
  • As already commented, 20GB is not enough for /. Mine are 30GiB, on one laptop 15GiB used, another 20GiB used.
  • From LM19 onwards you don't need a swap partition, by default the installer will create a 2GB swap file (lives in /). I've got one, but only because I've always had one. If you want one, make it the same size as your RAM or a little bigger. With 16GB RAM it will hardly, if ever, get used. I believe the only reason for a swap partition now is if you intend to hibernate.
  • You find find proponents for and against a separate /home partition, I've always had one, it makes life easier on a major version change (best route is re-install and you can re-install leaving home and all your config files untouched).
Best way of manual partitioning - use the disk management tools in win to reduce the size of your C: partition, leave the space unallocated. Use gparted (the linux partition editor, copy on your mint install iso) to create the linux partitions you want. Install with the 'something else' option, next screen shows you your drives and partitions. You point the installer at the partitions you created and tell it what to use them for.

Warning - timeshift is a system backup utility, installed by default (but you have to enable it). Think of it a bit like a win restore point. DO NOT use it with the defaults, but do use it. Default is to save snapshots in /timeshift, with small / partition = fill up quickly = no boot. Use another ext4 partition on another drive as the destination. If you don't have another drive, create a 60GB ext4 partition on your system drive and use it for timeshift.

If you are booting in legacy mode, win will probably have used up most of your primary partitions - ask for more advice. If booting UEFI on a drive with a gpt partition table, ignore this, you can have as many partitions as you want.
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hoofhearted4
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by hoofhearted4 »

OK so my ignorance is going to show even more now. Maybe I'm in way over my head here.

In Windows I would install applications to a different drive. Another SSD. Games were on a seperate HDD but I would copy them back and forth to my SSD when I was playing them. Is that not going to be the case with Linux if I can't choose where things are installed?

I didn't plan on dual booting here. I planned on getting rid of windows completely. I've tried the dual boot before and I just end up sticking with windows. I was trying to force my hand.
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AndyMH
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by AndyMH »

hoofhearted4 wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 9:33 am OK so my ignorance is going to show even more now. Maybe I'm in way over my head here.
Don't worry! Confused - keep asking, we are here to help :D
In Windows I would install applications to a different drive. Another SSD. Games were on a seperate HDD but I would copy them back and forth to my SSD when I was playing them. Is that not going to be the case with Linux if I can't choose where things are installed?
No you can't BUT linux programs are much smaller than windows so a much smaller footprint. There are exceptions to this on a couple of fronts:
  • appimages - a single executable file containing all dependencies - you can put it where you want, tend to be large files.
  • flatpaks - one of the problems with linux is so many distros, how to make a program work on them all? Flatpak is one solution, you still can't define where the program lives, but the trade for portability = much bigger package size (it has to contain all its dependencies). Snaps is another solution to the same problem (not enabled by default in mint).
I try and avoid appimages, flatpaks and definitely not snaps (linux ethos is open source, snaps aren't - sort of). I think the only appimage I've got is for arduino. At this stage you probably have no idea whether you are going to use any of these. Don't worry, a 30GiB / partition is probably big enough, and if not, it can be changed.

One area I can't offer informed comment on are games. Main game engine in linux is steam. That may allow you to define or install the games to different locations. I'll let others comment on that...
I didn't plan on dual booting here. I planned on getting rid of windows completely. I've tried the dual boot before and I just end up sticking with windows. I was trying to force my hand.
In that case, if you are booting UEFI, you need an EFI partition. If you are planning to manually create your partitions, then this needs to be size=100MB, format=fat32, flags=esp & boot. If in doubt ask. The EFI partition is where the bootloaders are stored, both linux and windows.

Not a gaming solution (can't handle the graphics/video), but if there are windows programs you can't do without, there are two options:
  • run wine - a win emulator, I use the commercial version, crossover, to run word/excel 2013.
  • run win in a VM (virtual machine) using virtualbox, I use this for a win7 VM running office 2016 and coreldraw.
Thinkcentre M720Q - LM21.3 cinnamon, 4 x T430 - LM21.3 cinnamon, Homebrew desktop i5-8400+GTX1080 Cinnamon 19.0
hoofhearted4
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by hoofhearted4 »

Thank you for all this info. I guess I haha to think on it for a minute. Maybe Linux just isn't in the cards for me. I WANT to switch but I've got my computer and drives all set up the way I want them, and I use my computer almost exclusively for games. It might not be worth the headache to try and make Linux work for me as my primary system. Sounds like it would be better if I was starting fresh without pre-installed data on all my drives and trying to convert my previous windows setup to Linux. I have a spare laptop that I threw Linux on. Might just stick with Linux there. It doesn't get used much, but I can hop on it and Tinker when I'm feeling adventurous lol.

Appreciate your time and your detailed explanations.
gittiest personITW
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by gittiest personITW »

hoofhearted4 wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 10:22 am Thank you for all this info. I guess I haha to think on it for a minute. Maybe Linux just isn't in the cards for me. I WANT to switch but I've got my computer and drives all set up the way I want them, and I use my computer almost exclusively for games. It might not be worth the headache to try and make Linux work for me as my primary system. Sounds like it would be better if I was starting fresh without pre-installed data on all my drives and trying to convert my previous windows setup to Linux. I have a spare laptop that I threw Linux on. Might just stick with Linux there. It doesn't get used much, but I can hop on it and Tinker when I'm feeling adventurous lol.

Appreciate your time and your detailed explanations.
Most ppl feel that way. Don't like change. Got everything how you want it. Got to the point where it is rare to install new software as you've got what you need. etc etc.
Trouble is, once you upgrade to then next Windows, some of your software won't work, and you might find that you have to change the way you work anyway in one way or another.
It really is worth trying - unless you are an avid gamer (but I can't testify to this as Mines doesn't cause the gpu to go into boost mode on my computer)
Linux is - not feeling like you are a wallet.
If you want to give it a go, use Foxclone to image your Windows drives (so you can go back to how it is at the moment), load up some Mint and jump in with a smile.
hoofhearted4
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by hoofhearted4 »

Yea I am an avid gamer. It's basically all I use my PC for.

I'm going to hold off installing Linux. Truth be told, none of what you said about Windows has been an issue for me. I upgraded to Windows 10 the day it game out and haven't had an issue with applications or games that were cause by an update. I haven't payed for Windows ever, I got Win7 from school and it's been a free upgrade since. I mentioned I want to switch to Linux simply because it's FOSS, but it might not happen. Gaming is too important to me to have to compromise. At the end of the day, since that's all I use my PC, I want whatever the best most fluid experience for gaming there is and whatever gives me the best performance.

For now I'll have Linux on my laptop and I'll make a dedicated effort to only use my computer for gaming and use my laptop or a VM for browsing or anything else. And then we'll go from there. Whenever I build a new PC maybe I can spend more time on this old one and really get into messing with Linux and seeing if it can replace Windows for my needs.

Thank you so so much for your time. I truly appreciate it!
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Larry78723
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by Larry78723 »

hoofhearted4 wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 3:57 pm Yea I am an avid gamer. It's basically all I use my PC for.
Based on that, my advice is to stay with Windows.
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gittiest personITW
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by gittiest personITW »

Well good luck and am sure Mint will still be around when you are ready! :D
hoofhearted4
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by hoofhearted4 »

Haha yea. I've been through this major desire to switch several times. Someday 😅

Thanks again everyone.
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Re: Best Practice Manual Partitions

Post by Reddog1 »

o.k. You must have Windows for your gaming. That means you must be able to boot Windows as a main operating system. You don't want to mess with your Windows partitions for obvious reasons, but you want to be able to use Linux as an operating system for everything, or almost everything, other than gaming. Your answer is to install VirtualBox on your Windows and then install and run Linux as a virtual machine. Since you are a gamer, you have a reasonably powerful machine, so this is an excellent option for you. You will boot Windows normally, and to start Linux you will simply open VirtualBox, highlight the Linux system and click 'Start'. It will load Linux and run a fully functional system at the same time you are running Windows. To close your Linux you just need to choose 'shutdown' in your Linux desktop, and it will, leaving you with your Windows desktop. Both operating systems will be usable at the same time. I run this way all the time, except I use Linux as my host. This machine actually has 5 virtual machines installed, plus the host. 6 machines available with a couple of mouse clicks.
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