Share your partition scheme!
Share your partition scheme!
How did you partition your disk before installing Linux? Do you regret how you set it up?
I'm looking for some real users experiences about this and I'm trying to find the best approach for my setup.
Thank you for sharing!
Just used the default for one big partition. I used to do tedious partition configurations, but it always ended up biting me down the road more than helping. This drive is for the OS, games, and working files. I have a 16TB NAS that holds anything worth saving, so if I need to nuke the whole thing and do a reinstall, all I really end up doing is downloading a bunch of Steam games again.
This gives basically no headaches at all. I am running this schema on all my Linux devices. And swap is done using a swapfile instead of a partition. This way, you can easily increase it later on.
~500 MB for /boot and the rest is LUKS-encrypted btrfs
- 550MiB /boot (also used as esp)
- Rest for / (btrfs)
- Subvols for /home, /var/log, /var/cache, /.snapshots (snapper snaps), /swap
Defaults are usually fine for most users. People who know they are going to distro hop or need to move data later should have a separate
/home, but that's about it until you get into special purpose installs.Just recently repartitioned my MacBook:
1 GB for EFI (vfat)
2 GB for /boot (ext4)
11 GB for swap
224 GB for / (bcachefs)
Grub cannot load a kernel off bcachefs so I need ext4 to bridge the gap. Once the kernel is loaded, it has no problem using bcachefs as root.
This is a laptop. On a desktop that can handle more drives, I would split /home onto a drive of its own.
I just chose the automatic partition thingy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In my first install I had different home and root partitions. That was a big mistake. Once set, you cannot resize them properly and you are fucked if they are not perfect for your need. In my case the root partition got to small. After some time I just reinstalled with a single partition and would do that again.
For Laptops:
- 500 MB - /boot/efi
- 1 GB /boot ext2
- X GB for / with Luks2 encrypted f2fs
And don't forget: GPT not MBR.
Two separate EFI boot Partitions if you dual boot. Its not worth letting Windows know about linux. Linux chainloads to Windows boot.
I partitioned my disk 50/50 for Windows and Linux with some proprietary software. It didn't end up working and i whiped my windows install.
Then I bought a new boot drive so my linux and macos install are physically separated.
/boot/efi, /root
I've been using Linux for over a quarter of a century. Initially I spent hours attempting to come up with the best partitioning scheme but these days I pick LVM and use the defaults.
If I run out of space, I add a drive (or grow the virtual one) and grow the filesystem into the extra space.
Sometimes I need temporary space and use sshfs to mount a directory from another machine.
In other words, today you have infinite options to adjust according to need, partition schemes are not nearly as important.
Even swap space can live as a file on a normal partition if required.
That said. If you have specific use cases, check what's required. Specifically because different uses need different attributes, it pays to check.
save 80gb for root, sone swap (if not on an ssd) rest for /home. that way reinstalling or switching has minimal risk of losing my /home
main ssd with debian stable: a single partition for the system + swap
secondary harddrive: an opensuse, a debian testing, and a freebsd partition + shared data partition
Well played NSA..! Anyway :
fabien@debian2080ti:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/debian2080ti--vg-root 28G 25G 1.8G 94% / /dev/mapper/debian2080ti--vg-home 439G 390G 27G 94% /home /dev/sda3 1.7T 1.6T 62G 97% /media/fabien/a77cf81e-fb2c-44a7-99a3-6ca9f15815091 /dev/nvme0n1p2 456M 222M 210M 52% /boot /dev/nvme0n1p1 511M 5.9M 506M 2% /boot/efi udev 16G 0 16G 0% /dev tmpfs 3.2G 1.9M 3.2G 1% /run tmpfs 16G 168K 16G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 24K 5.0M 1% /run/lock tmpfs 3.2G 2.6M 3.2G 1% /run/user/1000so basically NVMe for system and
/homein .5T and HDD 2T for backups and rarely accessed files, ext4.No dual boot, no Windows. No regrets.
Are you going to dual boot? Do you have some other special requirement? If not, there's no reason to overthink partitioning in my opinion. I did this for my main NVME:
- Partition table: GPT
- /boot : 1GB fat32 partition. Depending on your needs (number of kernels, initramfs's, other OSs) you might be fine with 500MB or even less. But because resizing can be a pain and I have the space to spare, I would much rather overprovision.
- / : LUKS2 partition containing a btrfs filesystem with all the remaining space
I use a swap file so I don't use a swap partition. If you want more control over specific parts of the filesystem, eg a separate /home that you can snapshot or keep when reinstalling the system, then use btrfs subvolumes. This gives you a lot of the features a partition would give you without committing to a specific size.
This is the only partitioning scheme I have never regretted. When I've tried to do separate partitions I find myself always regretting the sizes I've allocated. On the other hand, I have not actually seen any benefit of the separation in practice.
I used to split my drive in half to dual boot. But I've never booted back into windows since installing Linux Mint.
Should have just wiped the drive and installed Linux
I set up a dual boot over the winter, I've gone back to windows maybe 3 times at most.
I'll still keep it around in case I ever decide to dabble in games that use rootkit anticheat (though since quitting destiny 2 I don't see that happening lmao) and for other very occasional utility, but I'm definitely thinking of shrinking that partition even further
I have 1/3 of a 1 TB SSD for Windows, Linux and a free partition for random stuff each. With home finally on a second 2 TB SSD. This is great, so far.
½TB nvme SSD for the OS and any system/user level binary
1TB sata SSD for code projects, docker, and videogames
10tb HDD for just having a massive amount of fairly stable storage space. I gotta tell you I sleep really well knowing that at 4 in the morning a compressed disk image of my work SSD is being written to the hard drive.
It blows my mind that we had multiple modern ways to setup volumes in Linux (LVM, ZFS, BTRFS) for decades, yet people keep using partitions like it's 1990.
What would you recommend then?
I recommend creating 3 partitions. One for UEFI, one for /boot and one for LVM.
Inside the LVM you can assign volumes with complete flexibility. You can expand and shrink volumes. You can leave space unallocated and allocate it when the need presents itself. You can combine multiple disks in a single volume. You can do RAID over LVM or the other way around.
Or you can go with ZFS or BTRFS, they have subvolumes and other nice features built in.
What you don't have is to be stuck with fixed layout partitions anymore.
- 180 MB
/efi(if needed) - 384 MB
/boot(for LUKS compatibility) - Remainder
/(usually btrfs)
- 180 MB
For my desktop, I have two disks. One is root, one is home. They are single BTRFS filesystems with automated snapshots, compressions, and a few subvolumes. Works great.
For a laptop, similar but with only a single disk/partition and FDE. Also works well.
I just use the automatic thingy on my distro so like:
- Esp: 2GB (Limine + btrfs snapshot booting)
- root: all the drive
I setup a media PC with an SSD for boot / OS and spinning rust for the videos, music, etc.
So, I thought LVM would be a good idea... put the whole lot into a logical pool and then carve out large parts for the media which could be adjusted in the future.
No.
Resizing actually just chops up the drives even more (so, partition fragmentation)
Gparted can't see it, so adjustments are terrible CLI commands
And my favourite system backup tool (clonezilla) cant backup the OS without backing up the entire system.
I tend to just take the defaults when I'm deploying. I wouldn't get any benefit of having home or tmp on a separate partition, but it's nice that it's an option.
Partitioning is one of those obsolete Unixisms that is best left in the 90s. Only exception is dual booting, but even there partitioning isn't really very important anymore
Depends on your usecase... for a single user laptop, maybe... for a multiuser device or a server... nah.
I prefer partitioning away the user data for all usecases as that will fill up one day, and I don't want that to down the machine.
Default but In use fstab to keep my home folders (Documents, Pictures, Music, Video) on a separate HDD.
I've tried some weird and wonderful partition schemes in the past, but I think I've settled down and just go for simplicity. Half a gig for /boot, and the rest for / (in ext4). I've tried btrfs, but I've never been in the position where I needed snapshots, and ext4 is a lot more simple.
I also like having the flexibility of not having a separate home partition. I back up my super important files, so it doesn't matter if I lose home (not that I distrohop much anymore, anyway). And I don't have to stress about whether I've made my root partition big enough. For the same reason I use a swapfile rather than a swap partition (though I do need to look in to zram and zswap) - I like knowing that I can resize it easily, even if I don't really plan on doing so.
I have a separate boot partition so the rest can be encrypted with luks. That's all that's needed in a large majority of scenarios. Most other setups end up needing to resize something at some point which in many cases is a total pain.
On my primary PC I do have a second hard drive for documents and other long term storage files that I want to access more often than on the NAS. This way it's nearly impossible to lose those files of I reinstall something and it can act as a temporary backup storage for settings files when I do reinstall stuff rather than having a partition that wastes space or runs out of space.
sudo rm -rf *
with the majority here, I just use distro default / automatic setup in installer
LONG ago, I did the whole hand-crafted thing, obsessing over exactly how large each partition had to be, but with increasing speed and lowering prices of storage, this attention to detail now seems pretty irrelevant:
hdasplit into/boot,/tmp,(swap),/,/opt,/usr,/varhdbsplit into(swap)and/home
2-4G for swap (more if you want to hibernate), the rest for /. Only add a boot/EFI partition if needed.
Over-partitioning is a newbie mistake IMO, it usually causes way more problems than it solves.
I enjoy the way OpenSuse Tumbleweed set it up:
Laptop:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS nvme0n1 259:0 0 476.9G 0 disk ├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 1G 0 part /boot/efi └─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 475.9G 0 part └─cr_nvme-eui.044a5011215f41f7-part2 254:0 0 475.9G 0 crypt ├─system-root 254:1 0 168G 0 lvm /var │ /usr/local │ /srv │ /root │ /opt │ /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi │ /boot/grub2/i386-pc │ /.snapshots │ / ├─system-swap 254:2 0 2G 0 lvm [SWAP] └─system-home 254:3 0 305.9G 0 lvm /home $ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 476.94 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors Disk model: UMIS RPIRJ512VME2OWD Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 2099199 2097152 1G EFI System /dev/nvme0n1p2 2099200 1000215182 998115983 475.9G Linux LVMDesktop:
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS nvme0n1 259:0 0 931.5G 0 disk ├─nvme0n1p1 259:1 0 512M 0 part /boot/efi └─nvme0n1p2 259:2 0 931G 0 part └─cr-auto-1 254:1 0 931G 0 crypt ├─system-root 254:2 0 610G 0 lvm /var │ /usr/local │ /root │ /srv │ /opt │ /boot/grub2/x86_64-efi │ /boot/grub2/i386-pc │ /.snapshots │ / ├─system-swap 254:3 0 62.5G 0 lvm [SWAP] └─system-home 254:4 0 1.2T 0 lvm /home nvme1n1 259:3 0 931.5G 0 disk └─nvme1n1p1 259:4 0 931.5G 0 part └─cr-auto-2 254:0 0 931.5G 0 crypt └─system-home 254:4 0 1.2T 0 lvm /home $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/nvme?n1 Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors Disk model: WD_BLACK SN850X 1000GB Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System /dev/nvme0n1p2 1050624 1953525134 1952474511 931G Linux LVM Disk /dev/nvme1n1: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors Disk model: WD_BLACK SN850X 1000GB Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: gpt Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/nvme1n1p1 2048 1953525134 1953523087 931.5G Linux LVM