Hello!
I didn’t want to continue this to previous thread just because I think it would be started many themes in one thread. If I am wrong, tell me, and I will do right in my future posts.
This is about role of partitions. Now when I found where and how to make new partition with my desired number of GB, I want to ask (although it could be stupid):
If I wanted my partition consists operating system folders (except /home) would that partition’s role be “operatin system”?
If i wanted to format /home partition, would it’s role be “Data And ISV Applications”, or any other?
These are not official, but to help you setup a system easier. Default for the OS itself on openSUSE is btrfs, for a separate /home XFS, But, you’re free to choose.
In case of the guided partition setup, yes to both 1 and 2. But the role is not important, the file system is.
And, finally, if I chose EXT4 file system on all partitions, would the role be point for system to make decision which partition for what role? Don’t be mad about me, I just want to make clear every detail.
Thank you for having patience to answering my questions.
The role is just used for providing hints and suggestions. If you get the role “wrong” it won’t much matter.
If you are using the expert partitioner, then where you mount that partition is what matter. For the root partition, mount it at “/”. For the home partition, mount it at “/home”. A swap partition should be mounted as swap (no leading “/” there). And on a UEFI box, the EFI partition should be mounted at “/boot/efi”.
And, by the way, I use “ext4” for both root partition and home partition.
The main role of partitions is to separate distinct parts of the whole system; going back to Ada Lovelace, over 150 years ago, it is important to separate data from operations and this is the point of having a root (/) partition containing software that carries out operations and a /home partition that contains data.
With computers there has always been a problem of providing all the memory which programs need. Among the solutions is to write some of what is in non-permanent memory to permanent memory temporarily. Windows does this by writing to a special file on the hard drive; Linux does it by writing to a /swap partition which is used only for this purpose. This allows transfers between both types of memory to occur much more quickly.
If you are running a MySQL or MariaDB database, you may want to keep it on a separate partition to isolate it from other partitions.
Apart from the /swap partition which has its own format, you can format any of the partitions in the way that best meets your needs depending on the uses to which you are going to put the partition.
You can have it all live on one partition and even have a swap file. But that means you mix your system files with your personal. This make upgrades or even OS changes more difficult. And swap is faster on its own dedicated partition. You can mount a partition most any where as long as you don’t interfere with things the system needs. So some restraint is recommended. Which file system to use on any given partition is a matter of personal taste and requirements. Ubuntu, at least used to, did not default having a separate home partition. Which makes moving to another Linux occurred.I think they did it to make people moving from Windows more comfortable. In any case multiple partition can be a good thing if you don’t take it to far LOL
As others wrote above: the file system itself is not critical to run the system.
Choose whatever you want.
It doesn’t matter what is suggested during the installation.
You asked about ext4.
I myself use ext4 for / (or root) and for /home.
That worked fine for me for already several years.
You do not have to use a specific file system for a specific partition, as (implicitly) suggested by the openSUSE installer.
And pedantic as I am, I do not want to add anything to the advises given above, but would like to remark that a swap partition is just named a swap partition (and not /swap) and that it is not “mounted” (it is nowhere to be found in the directory tree, not at /swap, nor anywhere else).
It is just used for swap by the kernel because it is offered to the kernel as such, which you can do with any partition you want to add to swap, or even with a file you want to add by using command swapon.
Well, yes. But this was a question about Installing, and the installer does mention mounting the swap partition as swap.
And another note: there are two meanings of “role”. There’s the conceptual meaning – what is the role of partitions in the big picture. And then there’s the prompt about “role” in the installer. The thread title was really about the prompt for role in the installer, but some replies have been about the conceptual meaning, about where partitions fit into the big picture.
Building on John’s answer:
In a UNIX®, read Linux, world, partitions are used for the following purposes:
To allow systems with multiple disks to be simply accessed via the “/” directory tree – each disk partition « each partition is formatted with a file system and, various file systems can be used … » is mounted to a specific point within the “/” directory tree.
To allow the separation of system, application and, user data.
To prevent a “wild” application (or user) filling up all of the available disk space and therefore making the system unusable for other users. « UNIX® systems, and therefore Linux systems also, are multi-user systems. »
To allow the “best” file system to be used for the application at hand – other applications on the given system may, possibly, perform better with another file system.
Please be aware that, with UNIX® systems, and therefore Linux systems and, Apple systems, “everything is a file” and, ** all ** files are stored in a directory hierarchy which begins at “/” – the top level of the hierarchy …
There is only one exception: the “Swap” partition – it cannot be mounted to a point in the “/” hierarchy and, it’s a “system only” partition which only the system can access …
. Can you tell us how much free space you have for an openSUSE install ?