How much space to devote to linux partition?

[TiTaN]

Hey guys, I'm in a Systems Administration class using Linux and I'm going to install the Fedora Core 4 that came with the book so that I can do the assignments at home and was wondering how much of my spare 80GB minimum to partition for this install? I want to leave as much as possible free for, um, keyboard drivers .

I was thinking maybe 10GB for linux but then again I have no clue how much space the OS itself will take up and kinda wanted a little free space for files/progs.

Any help would be lovely, thanks in advance

[FX-Overclocking]

Well I know Ubuntu wants 10GB of space, so I would say at least 10.

[Shade_]

That depends. You can cram a modern distro onto just a couple of gigs... If you store your media someplace else. I would suggest using multiple partitons.

At a minimum I would suggest using one partition for '/' and one partition for '/home', (and a teeny one for swap). The reason to keep '/home' separate is in case you hose your system, or change distros, your user data and desktop setting should stay in tact. If you expect to have a lot of media you'll want to have either a big '/home' or a big 'shared media directory'. If you'll be installing oh say, Quake 4, you might want to have a big '/'. Really 10 GB is enough space to install just about every app you could ever want under linux. The nice thing is that you don't have to devote all of your space to linux initially, and if you want to install something 'big', you can always mount a new partition or drive into the filesystem (Most distros will have a gui to do this, but it can be done quiet easily with an editor and some console utilities)... Here's (basically) my current setup:

/home, 50 GB, for 3 user accounts, about 1/2 full (What the hell does my girlfriend have in her account?)
/, 50 GB, A little over 1/2 full. But I have a lot of software and 'big' games installed.
/media/pub, 120 GB, this is a software RAID setup that has all of my media files, it's about 75% full
swap, about 2x the amount of installed memory for me. I'm not sure what the 'ideal' amount is for the current 2.6 kernel.

There are some other directories you can make a case for having on their own partition, but if you are just toying around, a '/' & '/home' split would probably work the best.

[JonSvenJonsson]

Maybe also an /usr/local for software like quake4 or other useful scientific stuff, so you dont have to reinstall wehn you change distributions ?.

For the root partition (/) 10G should be more then enough, for extra-software not included in the distribution (/usr/local) 10G seem also enough (only if you dont install games ), for your homedir (/home) 10G also seems enough (at least for me), with the rest of your 80G disk you could setup two FAT32 partitions for communication with other OSes.

cheers Jon

[TiTaN]

wow...linux is more confusing than I already knew. I'll have to do some researching to figure this stuff out...

[Lithorus]

Originally Posted by TiTaN

wow...linux is more confusing than I already knew. I'll have to do some researching to figure this stuff out...

Let me correct you... Linux is different from Windows and have alot more possibilities. Once you get the hang of it, you will find Windows dull

[JonSvenJonsson]

Originally Posted by TiTaN

wow...linux is more confusing than I already knew. I'll have to do some researching to figure this stuff out...

No i dont think so .

See the partitions as Windows drives , like root (/) beeing C: with windows installed, /home being D: with your Dcouments and /usr/local is E: with you Software installed.

Is this less confusing ? Or is Microsofts directory structure less confusing ? (like system and sytem32 and ...).

cheers Jon

[Mythos]

Personally I have 350Gb for Linux!
But it is the only OS I use.

For your job even 2-3 Gb should be efficient...

[Shade_]

Originally Posted by JonSvenJonsson

See the partitions as Windows drives , like root (/) beeing C: with windows installed, /home being D: with your Dcouments and /usr/local is E: with you Software installed.

Yes, but the really sweet thing about linux is that any directory can be mounted as it's own partition or drive... so if you fill up '/' you can copy the files from oh say '/usr/local' to a new partition, then mount that as the new '/usr/local'. As long as you can cram another drive into your case, you're never out of space Albeit, you may wind up with a bunch of freakishly partitioned drives. (The only re-install that I did without changing distros was to make my partition structure sane, and to set up a big whack of software RAID storage to reduce the risk of losing my media files.)

Many (poorly written, often 3rd party) Windows apps will make assumptions about drive letters, directories, and stuff like that... It causes nothing but trouble... Under linux everything falls under '/'... It doesn't even have to be a drive connected to the local machine.

[UDHA]

Originally Posted by TiTaN

wow...linux is more confusing than I already knew. I'll have to do some researching to figure this stuff out...

I tried to do something like this with windows to make it more flexible, long story short, it was a disaster.

If you want to do something, provided you know how, linux can do it. Windows is as limiting to a linux user as macs are to a windows user.

[JOPS]

Originally Posted by Shade_

The only re-install that I did without changing distros was to make my partition structure sane, and to set up a big whack of software RAID storage to reduce the risk of losing my media files.

Too bad that RAID doesn't help you if your filesystem gets hosed though. I prefer to automatically copy data around between several machines instead.