Impressed with LM 7.2... Extra partition questions

[GodSpira1]

Installed Mandrake 7.2 on friday. I'm most impressed with how good konqueror is as a browser. I'm a big windows and IE fan, and have been frustrated with past linux experiences, but mandrake, and especially kde2 is great. Looking forward to 2.1.


some questions though:

What's the best way to organize a HD? The Drake install only made 1 partition.
Is a dedicated swap partition faster? Is there a good reason not to make one?

Also, im thinking /home should be in a seperate partition. I doubt I'll keep this distribution foreever, and there should be some place where files are a bit more permanent. I'm a bit lost as to where all the config files are and how to get the os to point to the new partition.

Any other tips/ideas on organizing files/partitions in Linux or mandrake specifically?

[FyberOptyx]

Check out the NHF's and also search the forum - Loads of posts regarding partitions

[Tyr-7BE]

Although there are loads of posts regarding partitions, I'm gonna reply to this anyways :p
Yes, a dedicated swap partition will make linux run much faster. Red Hat recommends that the swap space be equal to the size of your RAM, but from my experience, that's not sufficient if you don't have much memory. I have 64 M of RAM, and a 72 M swap partition, and it isn't nearly enough. If you have plenty of RAM (128 M and up), make it equal to the size of the swap...otherwise, make it 150% of the size or double it.
Currently, I have /home made up as a separate partition. I've allocated a good 400 megs to /home, and that's where I keep all my downloads, etc... If you're looking for a place to install things that will be more permanent, try making /usr a separate partition. That's where the vast majority of programs are installed by default...either under /usr or /usr/local.

[echemosis]

ok, i'm still learning..if'n i make /home a separate partition, and i save everything there..then i reinstall linux in the future, i'll still have all my files and other stuff?

[mjb0314]

Originally posted by echemosis:
ok, i'm still learning..if'n i make /home a separate partition, and i save everything there..then i reinstall linux in the future, i'll still have all my files and other stuff?

Yeah, as long as you don't choose to reformat /home during a reinstall. Most install routines from the distributions will give you a choice for which partitions you would like to format and will warn you that all data will be lost if you do so.

HTH

[manual_overide]

Well, swap is a weird thing. Definitely needs it's own partition, but as for the amount, well...

Most places recommend a swap size equal to the amount of RAM you have. Of course, if you have low RAM, you'll need more. If you have like 768MB RAM, you probably don't need that much swap, and can use the HD space for something usefull, like Metallica MP3s.

You need to make the call on how much swap you want. We can give suggestions, but you know what you'll be doing on your box. Just email and internet, and mp3s, and stuff? Don't need that much swap if you have enough RAM. Heavy graphics editing? 3D gaming? You'll need more swap, but you'll probably be further ahead getting more RAM to use w/ the bigger swap space.

It's all a big balance that you have to guess at. If you guess too low, you'll have performance problems. Guess too high, and waste valuable storage space. It's better to error on the high end, though. A few MB of wasted disk space is easier to to get by with than slow performance.

Yes. /home would be a wise choice for a separate partition. I also have a /mp3 partition. Again, how you partition your disk(s) is going to depend on how you want to use your machine. Lots of downloads and stuff you want to keep? Relegate them to a separate partition, that way you can change OSes, or reinstall, and not lose your files. Even though FAT32 sucks, I keep my stuff there. That way linux and windows can see it. speaking of dual boot, if you want to do that, you'll need a separate partition or more for your windows volumes.

There are lots of ways to partition a disk. None is better than the other, it just depends on how you plan to use the machine, and what you want to do in the future.

[GodSpira1]

Thanks for the replies Tyr and override,

Usually the system doesn't swap much with 128M. Used a graphical RPM manager to install something though, and it took an hour of HD thrashing, that didnt even let my mouse pointer have processor timeslices :(

I hope a swap partition will stop that from happening again.

I had read the NHF (thks for pointers) a few weeks ago, and reviewed it now. There's a few things I don't understand though.

Why have a dedicated partion for /usr? Won't a new distribution blow out whatever's in there anyway? Is there a hope of installing Debian through Ftp and still have access to all the programs that were installed into /usr by mandrake?

Also, /tmp as a seperate partition (as well as all the other ones mentioned in this NHF (Multi Partition NHF (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/installation/partition/multi_partition.html) http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/installation/partition/multi_partition.html
) What's the advantage of having /tmp as a separate partition. I assume there's a minor speed advantage, but doesn't that increase the potential headaches should there be extra temp files?

Finally will cfdisk (shouldn't a NHF on this be more useful than fdisk?) be good enough for <b>splitting</b> my single partition into 3, or is Parted worthwhile to download?