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 Since I’ve been doing it for years, I could be doing it in an outdated way, so I thought I should ask.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 But maybe it was just explained to me wrong and I really am doing it in an outdated way.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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[–] seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How does that work with you're installing a new system? Do the subvolumes just show up like partitions?

[–] Tiuku@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In tools like lsblk? Nope. They appear as directories, usually in the top-level subvolume, which typically isn't mounted anywhere in the system.

Then you just create mount entries in /etc/fstab just like you would with partitions, this time just using the subvol= option as mentioned above. I don't know if there are any installers that do this for you. Archwiki -- as usual -- has good documentation on this.

[–] seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So, it doesn't sound like it would be useful for me, since the reason why I have separate partitions in the first place is so that I can re-install a distro or install a new distro without having to back up /home first.