hey everyone, i got a rookie question, i made fresh install of endeavour os, i wanted to delete my windows partition so i clicked erase disk so now i only got this one big giant partition called endeavouros
here is how it looks like, so i want to create new partitions and resize this one giant partition, is that possible at this stage? or do i have to make a fresh install and make partitions manually during installation?
any response at all would be much appreciated, thanks!
You can shrink the large partition in live mode and then reallocate the space gained. The partitions must NOT be mounted!
could you elaborate a little more? i’m too noob, live mode meaning with usb? and i have to unmount this giant partition to shrink it?
It depends what you are trying to do specifically? Can you explain? For example, why do you want multiple partitions?
You certainly can modify the partition sizes.
Live mode means that you have booted from the USB stick but not yet installed. The hard disks are not mounted. The live system is only loaded into RAM. And there you can change your partitions with gparted.
Of course, it does not matter what was installed there before!
Edit: If you install with Grub, the efi partition doesn’t have to be that big. Half of it is enough.
With systemd-boot, however, the 1GB is justified.
well i don’t have exact answer, i think that having only one partition might be bad practice thats all, before i installed endeavour os i briefly had manjaro, and i remember having root partition as well as home partition thats why i thought to divide my big partition.
if having only one partition doesnt have any cons i guess i can keep it as is, could you explain briefly why would one want to have multiple partitions? or point me some good resource where i can read it for myself? thanks for your time
thank you very much sir <3
It is an old rule of thumb that the important data should never be on the system partition, in case the system needs to be reset. Then everything on the system partition would be gone. For this you make a data partition, or put /home on another partition. Or you leave /home on the system partition and link your data there.
I always recommend using a single partition unless you have a driving need to do something different.
A single partition is easier to manage since you don’t have to allocate space.
Whether or not you have a separate home is something of a religious debate. Some people swear by it and others think it is a bad idea.
In the end, it comes down to personal preference.
thank you both for sharing your experience, i’ll think this through and decide what to do, i get the feeling that i will learn much here and thank you for that, btw awesome community, i’m so glad i decided to go for endeavour, os is brilliant and so are people. thanks
As I said before: It is also a good solution to link the data from another partition to /home. If you don’t have your data on a separate partition, you must have a good backup concept. But that is necessary anyway …
I have /home also on the root partition (SSD) and my data on a slow HDD. That’s why I linked the data to /home.
A single large partition for the entire system, including /home, is not bad practice. It’s really just personal preference. Having a separate partition for /home can make reinstalling the OS simpler by just mounting the previous /home into the new installation. I have used that method for years with no downside and time saving benefits of not having to restore a backup of my data. If you go with a single system partition, I would definitely use some external backup solution for your data. Heck, I use a separate /home partition and have three external backup drives. I have rarely ever needed to restore a backup, but its nice to have them.
Unless you are pressed for storage, @dalto posted recently that 1GB for /efi partition is good. If you decide to use AKM to add Zen, LTS and the main linux kernels, then 1GB fat32 partition for ESP is good.
I have 168MB free. Remember it also needs to store fallback kernels and the headers.
du -sh /efi
Here it is [Tutorial] Convert to systemd-boot - #503 by HMS_Endeavour
As people here point out, having backups of your personal data is crucial in terms of catastrophe management.
Design of the partitioning scheme is meant for managing different needs.
Having one big partition is a good design for many use cases, as the management in “normal” use (which may mean different things for each user!) is very easy.
I also recommend making the system simple instead of complex when there’s no real need for complexity.
thanks for the tip <3
thanks
I disagree. Apart from the EFI partition, I always use one partition per physical drive. It’s the simplest way to do it.
Also, I disagree about having the home directory on a separate drive/partition than root. You typically put the root partition on the fastest drive you have, but you also want some parts of your home directory to be on a fast drive, stuff like .config and .cache. If you have multiple physical drives, you can put your documents, images, videos and downloads on a slower drive, and just symlink them. If you have only one physical drive, one partition is quite enough (plus EFI, of course).
Another exception might be the swap partition, but I prefer to have a swap file. It may be slightly more difficult to set up, but the flexibility of it is well worth it. Also, it should go without saying, whether you use a swap partition or a swap file, it should go on the fastest drive you have.
This is generally how I setup my machines.
