Hello,
I decided to install Leap 42.1 in my laptop. Currently I have Manjaro installed in my 125 gb SSD. I’d like to create a new partition for /home during the installation of Leap, but I’m not sure how big each partition must be. Do you think 40gb for /root would be enough?
I read that Manjaro can be problematic if you try to remove/install over it. Is it that true? Do I have to worry about it or be prepared?
Thanks!
40 GiB for root is more then enough it’s the recommended size if you plan on using btrfs, the size of /home depends on you and how you use your OS, my home is 20 GiB.
I have no idea about Manjero, there shouldn’t be a real issue but it all depends on how you partition your disk and if you are booting in uefi or mbr.
Thanks I_A,
I probably go with 35 gb for /root and the rest for /home.
I’m not familiar with uefi or mbr, but I’ll read about it and figure out the best method.
Note that all OS must use the same method in order the chain. ie Grub won’t see an OS that uses a different boot method thus you can not boot the other OS from grub . Either all MBR or all EFI. DO NOT MIX
if you use less then 40GiB for root use ext4 or xfs, do not use btrfs as it is hungry for bits and bytes and will fill up your hard drive rather quickly, personally I use 20GiB with ext4 and have no issues, I have plasma 5.7 and lxqt installed, plus a ton of user apps and still have ~5GiB free.
if you don’t know what uefi is and you have a laptop that is not 10 years old or you did not change something in bios you probably use uefi
In this discussion uefi and mbr (or legacy) determent the way your pc boots, older PC’s ~10 years can only do mbr, uefi was a way for microsoft to combat piracy (it is superior to mbr and it has more features) it was introduced and forced on oem’s with vista, most newer PC’s can select how to boot uefi or legacy (mbr) mode in bios, while you can change the way your OS boots it is recommended you do not mix boot modes, if your current OS uses uefi install openSUSE in uefi (you can select it in the boot menu), as I still use/prefer mbr mode and have little experience with uefi I’ll let someone else continue this discussion.
the main reason I asked if you boot in uefi is the extra fat boot partition uefi needs (uses)
in mbr mode you do not need or use an extra fat booting partition in uefi you do.
so check your partitions and see if you have a smallish (a few hundred mega bytes) fat formatted partition, if you do then you use uefi if not you’re on mbr
other then checking bios I’m not sure how to tell if you use uefi or mbr (you could use fdisk and see if your hdd is gpt or not)
My laptop is newer than 10 years, so I was assuming it’s using uefi. I checked with gparted and I could see a 100mb NTFS partition, so I will make a clean install of Leap booting with uefi.
I think I will choose ext4 for root. I’m planning to install xfce and gnome and my /home is rather big, so less than 40gb will be tight.
I’m backing up /home to an external drive so I can copy it back when Leap is running.
Wish me luck!
Thanks!
You can share the current home partition if you use a different user name so not to mix configuration files between OS’s.
At install just mount the current home partition as /home. Seems easier then what you plan
An NTFS partition isn’t a guarantee that you are presently using uefi. There are other methods to verify this. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable chimes in.
A short update.
I had that little NTFS partition, but going through the BIOS I realize that I was in legacy mode.
I can’t install Leap. I create my partition scheme (/home, /root, and /swap) with ext4. I choose GRUB2 with the default option (at first, then I iterate them). Everything looks fine until the end of the installation, when a window appears saying that a few packages have not been installed. After that the bootloader shows a list of errors. If I continue, it won’t boot, entering in panic kernel and booting in 90 seconds.
I’m downloading a new iso and looking for solutions. If I don’t find any, I will give more details in following posts.
It’s been a long day, I thought it was going to be easier.
So not at all clear. Is the small partition NTFS or FAT?? makes a difference also mount it and see what is in it
Is Manjaro installed MBR or EFI??? In Manjaro is there a /boot/efi directory??? If not it is probably MBR but then Manjaro is known to have odd setups.
show fdisk -l and gdisk /dev/sda
Multi-boot is never easy. You need to know all the quirks of all the OS you are dealing with and understand the underlying structures of drives, partitioning and booting schemes.
Run a checksum on the iso and compare with the published values on the download page. Also if using a DVD then run the media check. Note this does not work and not needed if using USB stick.
I’m thinking that that ntfs partition is a leftover from an oem (or microsoft) rescue disk you should ignore it, uefi boot partition must be fat32 it can not be ntfs.
I’m not sure why you are having issues, opensuse is simple to install (more or less)
a few tips from me (or how I install opensuse)
plan your disk partition before hand, I don’t know how many hard disks you have but partition them before hand, do you have windows? as you already have a Linux system you already have 3 or more partitions, am mbr limitation is the fact that a diks can have only 4 primary partitions! so use extended partitioning and make logical partitions inside the extended partition.
When installing opensuse and you’re in the disk partitioning part select custom disk partitioning in the new window select reload (or reread disk table) select the 2 partitions (the swap partition can be shared between manjaro and opensuse) select the one that’s going to be /root click edit then format and select the **/ **mount point, do the same for /home (or re-use the home but use a different user name so not to mix config files do not format /home if you are going to share it with manjaro) then install.
I’m sorry if I’m vague I’m not good at explaining things from memory as I haven’t installed opensuse since 13.1 I do live upgrades (I’m using 42.1 and this is one of the things I love about opensuse)
I prefer network install but as you are on a laptop I’m not sure the net kernel has wifi drivers you might need to plugin the lan cable
I did it!
I will try to recapitulate, but it has been an interesting experience.
What I tried to do is to leave Leap as the only OS with /home and /root in different partitions. I had Manjaro XFCE installed and I wanted Leap 42.1 Gnome. Too many changes perhaps.
I burned a usb with the Leap iso. I use dd and it went well. No errors. I reboot with the usb inserted and the installation started. As I said, I had some problems by the end of the process. Some packages were not installed and the bootloader didn’t work. I thought some options were not right. I started the installation over and over with different options with the same result. I opted for the network installation and I used the same usb. And it did work!
Now I’m getting used to the new DE and package manager. I love something, I dislike others. But it will be my laptop eventually.
I’m not sure what the problem was, but I really think that dd and opensuse are foolproof, but I’m further than that. I used a 4gb usb for a 4.7gb. I realized about the size once I burn the iso, but because I did not get any error during the burning and during the installation, I thought it was going to be OK. I wasted my time and your time because my stupidity. Sorry.
I have some other questions, but I will search the forum first.
Thanks for your help! I was looking for a stable distro with a supportive community, and I think I found it!
it’s good that you installed it
one of openSUSE’s features is the many different desktops it offers,
personally I haven’t used gnome in a long while and I’ve newer tried xfce, I use to use lxde (a gtk2 de) but I switched to lxqt,
lxqt left a good impression on me and I’ve been recommending it as an alternative light desktop (it’s qt so gnome fans might not like it)
you can try mate a gtk2 desktop or cinnamon a gtk3 one
I like the Gnome 3 style, but I got used to XFCE and how customizable it is. If I don’t get gnome in a week or so, I’ll go back to xfce.
Thanks again!