With that setup I think a “clean install” would offer to reuse and reformat the sda8 /root and leave sda9 intact and use it as /home.
If not so, when prompted by the installer, choose “Expert Partitioner” and:
choose sda8, “edit” (right click), “Format to” <default BTRFS or EXT4 if you like it>, “Mount as /”;
choose sda9, “edit”, “Do not format partition”, “Mount partition as /home”
choose sda7, if not already set to mount as swap, “edit” it accordingly.
IMHO a “clean install” is recommended, as upgrading from 13.1 might work or not depending on actual configuration.
Since a 105 GB /root is way too large (unless you installed very unusual stuff), I would shrink sda8 to 20-30 GB leaving 13.1 there as a safe harbour and make a new partition for Leap /root in the freed-up space; but of course this is up to you.
Stop at the “Install now” prompt if you have any doubts about the resulting setup and go back or abort.
Backing up everything important beforehand is a good practice: the installer is generally safe, but the human at the keyboard might always hit the wrong key… better safe than sorry: you are doing it at your own risk, anyway.
I’ve been able to upgrade 13.1 to LEAP in a VM, which means that you’ll likely be successful upgrading a physical machine as well(It’s still not recommended. Recommended is to upgrade to 13.2, then to LEAP).
There is a section added to the end of this SDB which describes doing an online upgrade.
If you follow the instructions completely, you will create a backup repository list if you need to return to your original system (13.1). https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade#Running_the_Upgrade
Summarizing the steps,
Fully update your existing openSUSE
zypper up
Backup your existing repo list for your current openSUSE
Disable all unnecessary repos
Execute the upgrade
zypper dup
I just used that SDB to upgrade a 13.2 when I found that that the update repos wouldn’t work, so wrote a script you’ll see that fixes and now should work.
i had read that sdb about online update, what i am asking is what will happen if i install on top of my root folder and formatting it. And i need 100gb of root partition since i install a lot of things and i dont want a memory shortage on the future. Also what will happen if i want to install say elemantary os or kubuntu just like the above way i mentioned, that is keeping the root partition as 107gb partition and do i need to format it and keep home folder as such. Also i want to know that if i format my root partition will i lose windows 8.1 os Thank u
By reformatting only sda8 105GB you loose only what is installed on it, OS 13.1 currently (unless you do something wrong, of course).
You can install every major distribution that way, but of course you overwrite the previous one, so you can have only one Linux distro at a time if you don’t create a separate /root.
You can use a single /home for several distros, but you must use different usernames for each distro you install, since directory structure is not compatible across distros generally speaking.
You are not going to loose Win8, unless you do mistakes; but you are loosing the original Win bootloader (you already lost it by installing OS 13.1, unless you did something special to keep it). This might prevent you from upgrading to Win10, say, unless you restore the Win bootloader with a Win repair disk, e.g.
Hope this clears your doubts; anyway I wouldn’t commit anything to disk if I’m not sure of what I’m doing.
When the installer proposes partitioning, click “Create partitioning”
On the next screen select “Custom partitioning”.
On the next screen, look for “Import partitioning” toward the bottom of the screen.
That should show you the exact partition usage that you had for 13.1 (including any Windows drive).
Select that partitioning. It will want to reformat your root partition. It won’t touch anything else (unless you have a separate “/boot”).
This is the way that I do most of my installs. It works well. I don’t lose any data other than what was in the root partition before it was reformatted.
Thank you for your mentioning of a boot partition.
How do i know whether i have a root partition?
And in my future installation of a linux dual boot with a windows os is it good if i don’t include a \boot partition separately even if i want to switch to another linux os.
Can you suggest your way of installing linux dual boot and partitioning of disk spaces.
Thank you very much
note:sorry to say that i think i don’t have boot partition which i separately given.
But how do i know whether i gave such a partition.??
I use a separate “/boot” because I use encryption. So “/boot” is not encrypted, and contains most of what is needed to setup the encryption for the main partition.
It is normally not necessary to have a separate “/boot”, unless there are special requirements (such as encrytion).
As to whether you have a separate “/boot” – you can use the command:
df /boot
Here’s my output:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 495844 36030 434214 8% /boot
If I did not have a separate “/boot”, then that last column would have been “/” rather than “/boot”. I’m guessing that for you it is “/”, which should be fine.
You can always tell the installer where you want things to go. But how and how much control you have depends on the Linux flavour. openSUSE has a very good installer so allows great flexibility.
There is only your abilities and courage that holds you back. Any time you play with partitions and OS’s you should always backup any important data. After all you may press a wrong button.
The best advise I can give is to pay attention to each and every screen and don’t treat installing a new OS like you would a Windows program and just click blindly. Linux is very powerful and as such it will gladly let you shoot your own foot. So pay attention.
Just to make things clear (or not!!) if you have only one root partition then you can only install one “flavour” of Linux (ie openSUSE, Ubuntu) at a time. Every time you reinstall a new Linux to you root partition then you will have to format it and thus wipe off the previous distro. You could setup another partition to act as a second root, so that you would have two flavours of Linux. But this is much more complex and probably not a good idea if you are still learning and/or this is your main machine. As previously mentioned be very careful when setting up your partitions, especially your windows ones. Not all Linux distros have such clear or powerful installation tools and it would be best to consult the relevant forums for that distro for advice if you are at all unsure.
A good way of trying different distros before touching your hard-drive is using either a live cd/dvd (quite often they have installers) or virtualise using something like Virtualbox. The latter can be often used within windows as well.
Thank u very much
I really don’t care if my previous linux distro is wiped or not all i care is i want my windows partition untouched that’s it.
And i don’t want a separate linux partition, thus i have 2 linux distro.Thank you.
Adding to the fact that i used the technique of over writing the root partition more than once,
But all the time there was a separate boot partition so i believe it is because of that problem.
But still i’m having this fear…
will it be safe to "format " the root partition …
and what shall i do with my home partition and swap…
DO i need to format them as well or simply replace it as such…
My question is still do i need to format my root partition and if i do format it will it cause my windows os to not to work…
do you really have a separate /boot partition?? If this is a EFI based machine there would be a EFI boot partition used for booting but that is not the same as a /boot partition which holds the kernel and startup code. Be very sure you understand and don’t confuse them. If You truly have a /boot then it should be formatted if doing a clean install and ot an upgrade
root as nothing at all to do with Windows. Windows has a different partition(s) where it lives. You do not want to reformat the efi boot partition if you have one because both Linux and Windows boot code lives there.
If you are not absolutely sure what partition is what show us fdisk -l
Although this is a simplistic answer best suited to new Users like the OP in this thread who is clearly intent on replacing an existing install (13.1), this answer is not technically correct… saying
if you have only one root partition then you can only install one “flavour” of Linux (ie openSUSE, Ubuntu) at a time.
In Linux, there are a variety of ways to run distros within distros. Some of the following are discussed or categorized as virtualization because their use often have similarities but are bare metal solutions which do not actually virtualize anything… And yes, most of these actually do allow you to run a different distro in your base installed distro.
I didn’t fully got on what u said but here is what i got when i used fdisk -l command
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xa51de97c
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 204796619 102398278+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 204796620 976751999 385977690 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5 204796683 614389859 204796588+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Partition 5 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda6 614389923 614598704 104391 83 Linux
Partition 6 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda7 614598768 622791854 4096543+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 622791918 827588474 102398278+ 83 Linux
Partition 8 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda9 827588538 976751999 74581731 83 Linux
Partition 9 does not start on physical sector boundary.