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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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One single partition for Linux versus using a partition table? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Heya folks, some people online told me I was doing partitions wrong, but I’ve been doing it this way for years. Since I’ve been doing it for years, I could be doing it in an outdated way, so I thought I should ask.

I have separate partitions for EFI, /, swap, and /home. Am I doing it wrong? Here’s how my partition table looks like:

FAT32: EFI
BTRFS: /
Swap: Swap
Ext4: /home

I set it up this way so that if I need to reinstall Linux, I can just overwrite / while preserving /home and just keep working after a new install with very few hiccups. Someone told me there’s no reason to use multiple partitions, but several times I have needed to reinstall the OS (Linux Mint) while preserving /home so this advice makes zero sense for me. But maybe it was just explained to me wrong and I really am doing it in an outdated way. I’d like to read what you say about this though.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

No effort at al. You define them once at install time and that's it.

For added flexibility you can use LVM volumes instead of partitions, they make resizing operations a thing of joy.

BTRFS also has something like subvols baked in, but I haven't looked into it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Getting the size wrong and needing to resize is the effort part for me. Resizing/moving my partitions is always a pain.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Once you learn about LVM, you'll never use a naked partition again. Or your money back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for your consultation about lvm.

I'll take a look.

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