this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
38 points (95.2% liked)

Linux

48461 readers
510 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
38
is there any drawback to having too many partitions? (linux.community)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by vestmoria@linux.community to c/linux@lemmy.ml
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

experimenting with my 2014 macbook pro and several linux distros (xubuntu, mint, fedora)

So far I have 8 partitions:

  • 1 EFI for grub,
  • 1 hfs+ (Linux HFS+ ESP) for OCLP, I think,
  • 1 apfs for the macOS 14 I cannot boot,
  • 2 ext4 for xubuntu and mint
  • 1 brfs for fedora (so it cannot be ext4?)
  • 2 unallocated ones, because I deleted systems I don't want.

I use gparted: the 2 unallocated sections are separated. Is this a problem?

How many partitions are too many for this machine? 247 GiB storage and 7.66 GiB memory.

After I'm done experimenting and keep the 2 to 3 operative systems I like, should I wipe the notebook, create the 2 to 3 partitions I'm going to need and reinstall? Or would it be better to simply delete the partitions I don't want?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Not really - sounds like you do need actual partitions since you're running different OSs. Typically you would use some other form of volume management (LVM, btrfs, zfs) for partitioning within a single OS. But for separate installs it's fine. gparted does a good job of letting you move things around and resize as needed. Just take care when shrinking partitions to shrink the filesystem first.

There used to be a time where there were obnoxious limits about the number and types of partitions you could have on disk (2 "physical partitions" and some number of "logical partitions" - I forget the details now). But if it works it works.