this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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One single partition for Linux versus using a partition table? (self.linux)
submitted 1 year ago by mambabasa to c/linux@lemmy.ml
91 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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 Since I’ve been doing it for years, I could be doing it in an outdated way, so I thought I should ask.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 But maybe it was just explained to me wrong and I really am doing it in an outdated way.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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[–] Kindness@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're using it well. Nothing wrong at all.

Butterface excels at keeping data safe-ish or at least lets you know when to throw in the towel, and which bits you've lost. It's also write intensive if you open a file with write permissions, which is harder on your drives.

Btrfs is great for the data you want to keep long term.

Also UEFI has some nice advantages if your computer isn't a dino that can't handle it.

Do what works for you, and keep on keeping on.

[–] chunkyhairball@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

You’re using it well. Nothing wrong at all.

This. Too many partitions for a home system can get pretty stupid pretty quick. But OP has just the right amount of separation between system and data. I've known people that were uncomfortable without breaking /var (or /var/log) off into its own partition, but that's really overkill for a stable, personal system, IMO.

computer isn’t a dino that can’t handle it.

I feel personally called out by this statement!

Seriously, the big one for me, is that I like having drive encryption. It protects my computer and data should it fall into the hands of, say, burglers. I also like turning it up to the elevens simply because I'm a bit TOO paranoid. You really need more than 1GB of ram to do argon2id key derivation, which is what fde is all moving to for unlocking purposes, and BIOS just can't do that. My main workstation is using a powerful, but older mobo with gigabyte's old, horrid faux EFI support.

Another good one for the security-conscientious person is Secure Boot, meaning that you control what kernels and bootloading code is allowed to boot on your computer, preventing Evil Maid-type attacks: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/SecureBoot

That's pretty far fetched, but maybe not too out of the question if you, say, work for a bank or accountant.

Of course none of that matters if you don't practice good operational security.