Hi, I plan to install openSUSE Tumbleweed on 90 GB of free space left on my 500 GB drive (the rest is occupied by a NTFS data partition). What partition scheme would be preferable, considering that I store (and will continue to do so) all my data on separate drives/NTFS partitions? So basically all that will be stored in \home is config files and current user data (browser history etc.). I want to be able to use snapper in case something goes wrong after an update, but at the same time I want to avoid running out of space for snapshots and programs. I also don’t want rollbacks to replace my user data. I’ve read that BTRFS is not advisable for \home in some cases, but I don’t know if this applies here, since I won’t store things like virtual machines on it. I’ll be thankful for any suggestions.
I’d go for 90GB of btrfs. AFAIK snapshots exlude /home unless manually configured to include them.
Using btrfs and snapshots you need at least 40GB for the / root partition, better use 50GB or even more with Tumbleweed due to the frequent upgrade with this rolling distribution.
Since you are planning on storing your user data elsewhere, maybe the simplest way is to NOT use a separate /home partition: the partitioner will propose a separate /home subvolume within the btrfs partition.
That way you will have ample space for applications or snapshots should you need it.
Alternatively you could use a separate /home ranging from 10 to 40 GB (a few GB is ample if you really do not plan to store user data there) formatted to the XFS filesystem (openSUSE default) or any other filesystem you are comfortable with; for instance with EXT4 it is easier to resize or move that /home partition should you need it.
It is also good practice to provide a swap space, even a tiny one, unless you already have one in another drive of the same system.
Ask if you need more…
You will have to decide this for yourself. But I can make suggestions.
Checking my own system, I am currently using under 5G for “/home”. And it’s really less than that, perhaps around 2.5G.
This is partly what I have accumulated for many years as a linux user. And partly (mostly) configuration stuff.
Yes, I do have some multimedia data, but those are on a separate partition. And since that’s what you plan to do, this should give you some idea on what is needed.
With 90G available – maybe somewhere around 60G for your root file system (“btrfs” takes a lot of space), then maybe 10G for swap and 20G for /home. Those are just ball park suggestions. You will have to make your own plans, since only you know how you are going to use your system.
Any of my machines (physical or virtual) that won’t store any significant amounts of User personal files (only the rare download),
I configure
Accept the default Disk Layout first,
Then click on the button to modify and unselect the checkbox that configures a separate User partition.
The result is…
Accepting the default, recommended size for swap,
A single BTRFS partition with both root and a User directory (not partition).
That provides max flexibility and efficient use of Disk space at the cost of possibly more more file fragmentation issues (but should be minimal if I really don’t store and change personal files), some theoretically incremental less reliability due to possible file contention.
TSU
Thank you for your quick replies! I’ll go with single BTRFS partition then, since it appears that indeed /home is not snapshotted by default. If I observe excess fragmentation on /home over time, I’ll make it a separate partition later.
As for the swap partition, I forgot to mention that I have 16 GB of RAM and it’s a desktop computer, not a notebook, and I don’t plan to ever hibernate it, so a 2 GB swap would probably suffice? (just in case of a potential memory leak or my bad habit of opening millions of browser tabs at the same time)
To sum it up, it would look like this: 500 MB (or less) ESP partition mounted at /boot/efi (because of the UEFI motherboard), 2 GB (or less) swap partition, and the rest would be one BTRFS volume, containing everything else. Is that right?
Also, just out of curiosity, what is the ratio of the occupied space on your root partition vs \home, but only counting files that need to be in \home for the system to work properly (no multimedia files, just config etc.)? It may help me with planning future setups.
We do understand you and all want to help, but please do us a favour and try to hit the / key when you want show a path like /home. In any case, doing this on a terminal when typing a command will not bring you what you expect. rotfl!
Yes, that is enough for your planned use (just close the offending app if you notice slowdowns…). With 16 GB RAM I would not use less than that, if possible I use at least 20% of RAM, but 10% still offers some protection.
To sum it up, it would look like this: 500 MB (or less) ESP partition mounted at /boot/efi (because of the UEFI motherboard), 2 GB (or less) swap partition, and the rest would be one BTRFS volume, containing everything else. Is that right?
Yes.
Also, just out of curiosity, what is the ratio of the occupied space on your root partition vs \home, but only counting files that need to be in \home for the system to work properly (no multimedia files, just config etc.)? It may help me with planning future setups.
See comment #4 by nrickert above.
Swap needs to be at least the size of physical RAM only for memory dumps.
Can’t remember if Linux stores hibernation file in swap or not (I’d have to look that up unless someone can state authoritatively).
Swap should not be abosolutely zero because even if not absolutely needed, the OS may swap want to swap infrequently used files to disk just to run more efficiently.
You can use the Free tool for various memory usage analysis and management
https://en.opensuse.org/User:Tsu2/free_tool
And, locations in /home can be default for a number of apps… For example Web browsers typically download to the /home/user/Downloads folder and apps typically save to the /home/user/Documents folder where in both cases “user” is the currently logged in User Account name.
TSU
But, again, you really cannot compare. I mostly use webmail. If I were to seriously use Thunderbird, that would use more space in “.thunderbird”. And if I were to seriously use Kmail, that would take more space in “.local”.
I use several browsers for different purposes, and that may be why I am using so much of “.cache”.
Haha, I needed to switch to Windows for several months because of my university, and it seems that I already got some awful habits out of it Oh well, thankfully this horrible experience is over now…
Thanks everybody for the answers. I’ll set up everything this way once I’m done with backups.
Note the best way to run Windows (not counting gaming) is to allow space for a virtual Machine and run Windows on a Linux Desktop
Also not counting major CAD/3D modeling/rendering software, which was sadly the case here. To be honest, I was also curious if after several years on various Linux distros I could my make my workflow on Windows as efficient (no) and if that OS was as terrible as I remembered (it was).