this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Linux

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One single partition for Linux versus using a partition table? (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 year ago by mambabasa@slrpnk.net to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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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 Since I’ve been doing it for years, I could be doing it in an outdated way, so I thought I should ask.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 But maybe it was just explained to me wrong and I really am doing it in an outdated way.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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[–] nous@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

Even with a single partition for / and /home you can keep the contents of /home during a reinstall by simple not formatting the partitions again. I know when I tried years ago with Ubuntu years ago the installed asked if I wanted to remove the system folders for you. But even if the installer does not you can delete them manually before hand. Installers wont touch /home contents if you don't format the drive (or any files outside the system folders they care about).

Though I would still backup everything inside /home before any attempt at a reinstall as mistakes do happen no matter what process you decide to go with.

[–] mambabasa@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Am I doing something wrong? Not seeing a particular option? I have never seen or experienced what you’re describing.

[–] nous@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

There was no option per say, at least on the ubuntu installed I tried many years ago. Just a popup that happened sometime before the install but after the manual partitioning if the root partition had folders like /etc /usr /var etc that were needed by the installer. Not sure if all installers do this - but I would suspect if they didnt you can just delete the folders manually before you enter the installer and pick manual partitioning option and opt to not format any partitions.