Wednesday, March 2, 2011

installation tip - install your home directory on it's own partition

A user over in lifehacker made this comment to an article about which Linux distribution to pick:


... A useful strategy for a Linux install is to put the Install into a small (20-30GB) partition, then mount the user-space as a separate partition, which can be huge and usable by many different distros. I've never had Linux system needs grow much beyond 5GB, even when my user-space gets into the 2TB range.


I personally have never done this simply because I wanted to make things easier for myself (creating 1 partition seemed easier than spreading things across multiple partitions - more to worry about). However as I've been using Linux for a while now I think this is a useful strategy as well. 


When you install Ubuntu will likely suggest mounting your home partition (the equivalent of the windows user folder which is located in documents & settings in XP or Users in Win7).  I would suggest taking this option.


For Linux techies, this is probably nothing new but for those of us not so techy, it's a pretty good tip.


EDIT: Another user went on to say:
Nicely stated. To help with your selection, partition your HDD to make it easy. 
20GB for the OS i.e. / 2GB for swap The rest for /home and /data - put both of these in different extended partitions. 
Now when it is time to swap the OS, you only need touch the / partition and don't need to risk your /home and /data partitions. This setup has been covered on LH and at the[www.howtogeek.com] already. Using Linux demands a better understanding of partitioning to make your life easier. Avoid this knowledge at your peril. 

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