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well a little but not the exact same. It takes snapshots of the file system and you do have restore points but how and when is different then Windows restore. On the other hand it is easier to customize when and how often snaps are taken. I agree that the default setting are a bit aggressive and is why you need so much space for the default partitioning. But it can be adjusted or turned off. At the moment snapper is only on BTRFS.
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If you don’t hibernate then the exact amount of swap is not as important. But you do need some in case you run short of memory. But it all depends on how you use the machine. if say you do scientific work and deal with huge arrays you probably have more need of swap then just doing general desktop work. Assuming you have 6 gig of memory for general Desktop usage you probably don’t need more then 2 gig of swap. I have 8 gig memory and seldom hit swap at all. Hibernation uses the swap area to store the memory image so as a rule of thumb you need about as much swap as memory plus or minus. It all depends on your needs and there is not absolute rule.
On 2015-06-09, papakota <papakota@no-mx.forums.microfocus.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for your reply!
>
> I’m a complete newbie to OpenSUSE, so I want to ask couple of questions
> to make it clearer for me.
>
> 1) That Snapper tool (is it something similar to Windows’ System
> Restore?). Does this tool only work on btrfs?
No and Yes. No: the System Restore tool is not an integral feature of the file system in Windows. Yes: Snapper only works for BTRFS.
> 2) As per swap – I never use hibernate/suspend in Windows and never
> used in Ubuntu so far. Normally I don’t need it. BUT… what I was
> asking that IF those two modes come in handy (in terms of reducing
> operational costs and to avoid over-usage of hardware) if I run a web
> server that should be on at all times (or, realistically, most of the
> time)? Otherwise, why would I need 6 GB of swap for?
Swap is more than just for hibernation/suspending to disk. People might argue if RAMs are so large at the moment swap is
unnecessary unless you intend to hibernate/suspend. This of course is wrong. RAM is cheap. But hard drive space is
cheaper. I always allocate swap according to the following formula:
SWAP space = 1.5->2 * maximum amount of RAM the computer in question is ever likely to have installed.
One of my machines has 128 GB of RAM. And yes, I have 256 GB swap allocated on an M.2 SSD. And yes, it’s very essential
for the particular application of the machine.
Thanks you all for replying me!
Couple of concerns:
- I’ve just read that btrfs is NOT recommended for MySQL and webservers (too slow comparing to ext4???). And since my goal is to install LAMP and to run a webserver…???
- I want to go with OpenSUSE 13.1 (NOT 13.2). And 13.1 has an older kernel. So the question is if 13.1’s kernel works fine with btrfs? Since I’ve read that it’s recommended to use newer kernel versions w/btrfs?
P.S. I’m still unsure which is the best way to safely get rid of Ubuntu – delete it from within Windows 7’s disk management tool or to use 3rd party apps?
Hi
When I ran btrfs on 13.1 it worked fine, just snapper config (/etc/snapper/configs/root) is way too aggressive so modify for sure… My wife’s SLED 11 SP3 install has been running btrfs for lets see over two years now, never missed a beat with the 3.0.xxx kernel (the total snapshot number is 11,555 with 2 kept per day and one snapshot every hour all on a 60GB SSD).
Look at using xfs for /srv partition then?
Just boot the openSUSE install dvd in rescue mode and remove the offending partitions, or just use YaST expert partitioning to reconfigure and format as required during the install.
Thanks for your reply!
Regarding NVidia Optimus which is better supported in 13.2 version of OpenSUSE. Is there a way to fix that in 13.1? Of course, I could install 13.2, but then I want the old KDE dark theme (not the one which is light green that 13.2 offers)… 13.1 uses kernel ver. 3.11, but I heard that it’s started from kernel ver. 3.12
So can have get the best of BOTH worlds – ie. dark KDE theme from 13.1 and better NVidia Optimis support from 13.2???
Hi
I don’t have optimus hardware so can’t comment, maybe someone who uses and sees this thread can comment… likewise for the theme since I’m a GNOME user, but I imagine it would be easy to port it over… (maybe someone already has?)
Thanks for your reply!
One more thing that somewhat confuses me:
I think I will have a primary sda1 for /boot (ext4);
primary sda2 / (btrfs)
primary sda3 swap
sda5 extended
sda6 /home (ext4)
Is it a right way OR should I ONLY make /boot a primary and the rest goes into extended???
I’ve looked up speed tests and the diference in speed between BTRFS and EXT4 is small with BTRFS a bit faster in some tests and EXT beating in others. Speed should not be a deciding factor. BTRFS has lots of bells and whistles, some not yet available in a stable forum but it is trying to be the ONE ie all things for all people. I personally think openSUSE was a bit over zealous making it the default file system, but it does work and appears stable. Only down side is the default snapper settings which probably make better sense for a developer then a simple Desktop.
There is no right way to set things up. You don’t really need a separate boot unless you are setting up an encrypted root or using LVM containers. There is one possible problem that can occur in edge cases with hibernation because grub does not know how to write to BTRFS that an ext2/4 boot will fix. Your layout is OK if for a legacy boot. If you use an EFI boot and GPT partitioning, not leagcy, there is no such thing as extended partitions or logical and you can have as many primary partitions as you want. If you want to do web servers then maybe yet another partition for data and point the SQL server to that area. Makes backing just the data easier. You can mount it as /data or some other name.
Optimus should be more or less the same between 13.1 and 13.2 Most people have problem because they follow random instructions from the web. Follow these and it should work fine. Do not install the regular NVIDIA driver only use the nvidia-bumblebee package
Hello again and thanks for taking your time to reply!
Finally I made it. I have OpenSUSE 13.2 dual-booting with Windows 7. I decided to go with the latest OpenSUSE release. To me it seems more mature.
Well I have lots of questions, but I’ll ask them in new threads to keep things in order here. My first impression is that OpenSUSE is better, but also more complicated comparing to Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 Here you really must know what you’re doing. Just lots of new KDE stuff. A lot to learn!