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There are lots of very good reasons why running small root partitions on Linux desktops is a very bad idea. The smart money is on a single large partition for

There are lots of very good reasons why running small root partitions on Linux desktops is a very bad idea. The smart money is on a single large partition for home and root and everything else. This way you get 100% disk availability with zero extra effort and you get maximum performance. No need to shuffle disk space around with resizing partitions or thing volumes or anything like that. Unless you have some sort of special use case were root partition can't be shared with root then on most desktop setups having a single large partition is the most straightforward way to do things. Hibernation isn't really something really useful anymore. If people really really want it then I don't see why they shouldn't get it... but I really don't see the point.

lproven 5d ago
I disagree on every single point. > There are lots of very good reasons why running small root partitions on Linux desktops is a very bad idea. Go on then: name them. I give root about 2x the space I expect it to take when fully populated. 4x if it's a very big disk. The rest is for me, not the OS. > The smart money is on a single large partition for home and root and everything else. With all due respect and deference: Drivel. Absolute piffle. This is in fact the reverse of the truth. Maybe you are young and inexperienced but I have bad news for you: OSes crash sometimes. When (not if) they crash, volumes that they they have open files on tend to get corrupted. This is an especially key problem with some filesystems such as Btrfs that do not have working repair tools. You should always keep your own data on a separate partition at least, and ideally, a separate physical drive. It will have less wear and that makes SSDs last longer. In the last decade, keeping my OS on a different volume from my data in `/home` has saved my work at least 5-10 times. I work in the Linux industry. I work with testing OSes. But even on stable OSes, I've seen them crash far more than I'd like. Sadly, in my extensive personal experience, Btrfs is notably unstable and unreliable, and it fails frequently in normal routine operation, especially on snapshotting OSes such as openSUSE. Always keep `/home` somewhere else, on a different disk format, for safety. XFS is good, but difficult to resize or repair. Plain old ext4 is very good in terms of repair tools. > This way you get 100% disk availability Until it fails > with zero extra effort Extra effort in setup is FAR preferable to extra effort in data recovery later. > and you get maximum performance. The opposite of the truth. Swap on a different physical drive is faster. Spread the load across multiple media for performance. That is how server OSes do it, because it is faster. Any decent NAS OS will compel you to install the OS on different physical media from the data volumes for this specific reason. You literally could not be more wrong. > Unless you have some sort of special use case were root partition can't be shared with root then on most desktop setups having a single large partition is the most straightforward way to do things. Easiest does not mean best. Best is usually not simplest or easiest. Wrong again. > Hibernation isn't really something really useful anymore. Absolute nonsense. Your own experience does not mean universal experience.
- akerl_ 5d ago
  You’ve tainted your otherwise interesting comment pretty intensely by mixing in this level of condescension and hostility.
  - NBJack 5d ago
    I, uh, would be more careful of making that statement given our public comment history. I know I can't cast any stones here. More than interesting though, I will vouch for many of the points they presented in practice. Spreading partitions and taking advantage of the flexibility of Linux with how and where they are mounted has been a part of best practices for decades now. Many cloud-based solutions for Linux workstations I've used take full advantage of this for easier management of space (i.e. volume expansion) as well as security considerations, to say nothing of keeping your /var/log separate to avoid running out of space because you turned on verbose mode for something.
    - akerl_ 5d ago
      I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. I deserve to be called out just the same if I’m wrapping good points with “Drivel. Absolute piffle.” and “Maybe you are young and inexperienced”.
- Delk 5d ago
  > In the last decade, keeping my OS on a different volume from my data in `/home` has saved my work at least 5-10 times. Mine is of course just another anecdote, but despite seeing some crashes or hangs over the years, I can't remember the last time I've even had to manually fsck my ext4 filesystems, and I'm honestly not sure I've ever seen any unrecoverable corruption on ext4 or ext3. (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, as it certainly can, but I wouldn't think it's that common unless you're operating on a fairly large scale. And before journaling filesystems, crashes were of course a whole different deal.) I used to keep /home separate on my personal devices (and maybe some other partitions as well because it was "a good practice"), but for more than a decade now my personal devices have had everything on a single large root fs, save for /boot and swap. I've stuck with rather conservative fs choices and haven't used btrfs much, so I don't know if the story is different there. What you gain with a single large root partition is of course that you don't need to know in advance how much software you'll want to install under /usr or how much space you'll need for /home or /var. Multiple partitions can certainly be a good idea from a system management point of view, for cases where people either want to actively manage the system, or when their needs are demanding enough that it's warranted. If I were deploying a server for any kind of real use, yeah, the database or the server logs would certainly not be on the root volume. But in case of desktops or laptops, most people, even engineers, don't really want to be meticulously managing their personal computers. Nor are most people's personal computing needs that demanding. The convenience of not running out of space on a single partition because you guessed the your future needs wrong wins over. > Swap on a different physical drive is faster. > Spread the load across multiple media for performance. That is how server OSes do it, because it is faster. Of course it is, but in contrast, laptops don't really tend to have separate physical drives on which to put swap. I doubt most people would care enough about swap performance to install a separate high-performance drive for it even in desktops. With that said, I also do keep a swap partition even on personal computers, and hibernation can be useful. (I think there are some issues with hibernation and encrypted swap in Linux, though, so I haven't bothered with it in a while).

lproven 5d ago

I disagree on every single point. > There are lots of very good reasons why running small root partitions on Linux desktops is a very bad idea. Go on then: name them. I give root about 2x the space I expect it to take when fully populated. 4x if it's a very big disk. The rest is for me, not the OS. > The smart money is on a single large partition for home and root and everything else. With all due respect and deference: Drivel. Absolute piffle. This is in fact the reverse of the truth. Maybe you are young and inexperienced but I have bad news for you: OSes crash sometimes. When (not if) they crash, volumes that they they have open files on tend to get corrupted. This is an especially key problem with some filesystems such as Btrfs that do not have working repair tools. You should always keep your own data on a separate partition at least, and ideally, a separate physical drive. It will have less wear and that makes SSDs last longer. In the last decade, keeping my OS on a different volume from my data in `/home` has saved my work at least 5-10 times. I work in the Linux industry. I work with testing OSes. But even on stable OSes, I've seen them crash far more than I'd like. Sadly, in my extensive personal experience, Btrfs is notably unstable and unreliable, and it fails frequently in normal routine operation, especially on snapshotting OSes such as openSUSE. Always keep `/home` somewhere else, on a different disk format, for safety. XFS is good, but difficult to resize or repair. Plain old ext4 is very good in terms of repair tools. > This way you get 100% disk availability Until it fails > with zero extra effort Extra effort in setup is FAR preferable to extra effort in data recovery later. > and you get maximum performance. The opposite of the truth. Swap on a different physical drive is faster. Spread the load across multiple media for performance. That is how server OSes do it, because it is faster. Any decent NAS OS will compel you to install the OS on different physical media from the data volumes for this specific reason. You literally could not be more wrong. > Unless you have some sort of special use case were root partition can't be shared with root then on most desktop setups having a single large partition is the most straightforward way to do things. Easiest does not mean best. Best is usually not simplest or easiest. Wrong again. > Hibernation isn't really something really useful anymore. Absolute nonsense. Your own experience does not mean universal experience.

akerl_ 5d ago
You’ve tainted your otherwise interesting comment pretty intensely by mixing in this level of condescension and hostility.
- NBJack 5d ago
  I, uh, would be more careful of making that statement given our public comment history. I know I can't cast any stones here. More than interesting though, I will vouch for many of the points they presented in practice. Spreading partitions and taking advantage of the flexibility of Linux with how and where they are mounted has been a part of best practices for decades now. Many cloud-based solutions for Linux workstations I've used take full advantage of this for easier management of space (i.e. volume expansion) as well as security considerations, to say nothing of keeping your /var/log separate to avoid running out of space because you turned on verbose mode for something.
  - akerl_ 5d ago
    I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. I deserve to be called out just the same if I’m wrapping good points with “Drivel. Absolute piffle.” and “Maybe you are young and inexperienced”.
Delk 5d ago
> In the last decade, keeping my OS on a different volume from my data in `/home` has saved my work at least 5-10 times. Mine is of course just another anecdote, but despite seeing some crashes or hangs over the years, I can't remember the last time I've even had to manually fsck my ext4 filesystems, and I'm honestly not sure I've ever seen any unrecoverable corruption on ext4 or ext3. (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, as it certainly can, but I wouldn't think it's that common unless you're operating on a fairly large scale. And before journaling filesystems, crashes were of course a whole different deal.) I used to keep /home separate on my personal devices (and maybe some other partitions as well because it was "a good practice"), but for more than a decade now my personal devices have had everything on a single large root fs, save for /boot and swap. I've stuck with rather conservative fs choices and haven't used btrfs much, so I don't know if the story is different there. What you gain with a single large root partition is of course that you don't need to know in advance how much software you'll want to install under /usr or how much space you'll need for /home or /var. Multiple partitions can certainly be a good idea from a system management point of view, for cases where people either want to actively manage the system, or when their needs are demanding enough that it's warranted. If I were deploying a server for any kind of real use, yeah, the database or the server logs would certainly not be on the root volume. But in case of desktops or laptops, most people, even engineers, don't really want to be meticulously managing their personal computers. Nor are most people's personal computing needs that demanding. The convenience of not running out of space on a single partition because you guessed the your future needs wrong wins over. > Swap on a different physical drive is faster. > Spread the load across multiple media for performance. That is how server OSes do it, because it is faster. Of course it is, but in contrast, laptops don't really tend to have separate physical drives on which to put swap. I doubt most people would care enough about swap performance to install a separate high-performance drive for it even in desktops. With that said, I also do keep a swap partition even on personal computers, and hibernation can be useful. (I think there are some issues with hibernation and encrypted swap in Linux, though, so I haven't bothered with it in a while).