Partitioning of installation media

Partitioning of installation media

The partitioning of the drives depends on many factors:

• Selection of the siduction variant
  
• Size of the available drives and RAM
  
• Single-boot or dual-boot with an already installed system (Windows, Linux, MAC)
  
• Sharing of data for the installed systems

For Linux beginners, we recommend that you create only two partitions
/root (incl. /home ) and swap, as this makes a first installation much easier. After the installation, additional data partitions can be created, or a separate /home if desired.
However, we rather advise against creating a /home partition. The /home directory should be the place where the individual configurations are stored, and only these. For all other private data, a separate data partition should be created. The advantages for data stability, data backup and also in case of data recovery are almost immeasurable.
Purchasing an external USB hard drive for regular data backup is also worth considering.

Minimum requirements

The minimum requirements for the reasonable use of a siduction installation are:

Otherwise, we recommend at least 50 GB of disk space when installing on a partition formatted with Btrfs.

Examples with different disk sizes

If a dual boot with MS Windows™ is created, MS Windows must always be installed as the first system onto the hard disk.

“GPT” should be selected as partition table type. Thus, you can use the advantages over “MBR”. Only with old hardware, “MBR” is still useful. The explanations for this can be found on our manual page Partitioning with gdisk.

The examples refer to partition tables of the type “GPT”. It needs the first two, very small partitions in order to function.

Desktop, dual-boot (MS Windows and Linux)
1 TB hard disk:

Desktop, dual-boot (MS Windows and Linux)
120 GB hard disk:

Desktop, Linux only
500 GB hard disk:

Desktop, Linux only
500 GB hard disk with Btrfs snapshot:

Desktop, Linux only
160 GB hard disk

Laptop with 32 GB RAM, dual boot (MS Windows and Linux)
1 TB hard disk:

Laptop with 8 GB RAM, Linux only
120 GB hard disk

File systems of the partitions

The type “GPT” should be selected as the partition table. In this way the advantages over “MBR” can be used. Only with old hardware “MBR” is still meaningful. The explanations for this can be found on our manual page Partitioning with gdisk.

Linux Swap
A swap partition corresponds in functionality to the swap file in Windows, but is far more effective than it. Its size depends on the installed system and the user’s requirements. Some examples:

• For notebooks that are to be hibernated, we recommend a swap partition that is at least one GByte or 25% larger than the RAM.
  
• Current desktop PCs that are not to be hibernated and have enough RAM (16 GByte or more, depending on usage) do not need a swap partition.
  
• For desktop PCs with very limited RAM, the rule of thumb is still that the swap partition should be twice the size of the RAM used.

ext4
The ext4 file system is the default file system on siduction. This applies to all partitions when only Linux operating systems are used.

Btrfs
Btrfs can be used instead of ext4. Together with the program Snapper it offers the possibility to create snapshots of the file system which are selectable in the boot manager Grub afterwards. You need a sufficiently large hard disk. See also System administration Btrfs.

NTFS
For data exchange with a Windows installation the designated partition should be formatted with NTFS. Siduction can access the data read and write. For Windows it is the standard file system.

HFS+
For a dual-boot installation with Macintosh, a separate data partition with the HFS or HFS+ file system is useful. Linux and MAC can access it read and write.

Partition editors

Caution
When using any partitioning software, there is a risk of data loss. Always back up important data to another disk in advance.

• GParted: an easy to use partition editor with a graphical interface
  Gparted is available on all siduction installations and installation media equipped with a graphical user interface. It supports a number of different partition table types. The manual page Partitioning the hard disk with GParted provides more information about the program.

• KDE Partition Manager: a Qt based, easy to use partition editor with a graphical user interface
  The KDE Partition Manager is the standard partition editor for the KDE Destktop and as comprehensive as Gparted.

• gdisk / cgdisk: a console program for partition tables of the type GPT - UEFI
  gdisk is the classic text mode program, while cgdisk has a more user friendly ncurses interface. The manual page Partitioning with gdisk provides more information about the program.

• fdisk / cfdisk: a console program for partition tables of the type msdos - MBR
  Note: fdisk should only be used for old hardware that does not support GPT - UEFI.
  fdisk is the classic text mode program, while cfdisk has a more user-friendly ncurses interface. The manual page Partitioning with cfdisk provides more information about the program.

Mounted partitions (also swap) must be detached before editing.
You can do this by entering to following command as root:

# umount /dev/sda1

To mount a swap partition, use this command:

# swapoff -a

Further information

Here the comprehensive english documentation of GParted

For more partitioning options see:

• Logical Volume Manager LVM partitioning

• partitioning with GPT to support UEFI Partitioning with gdisk