Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)GU
Posts
1
Comments
69
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • You can only mount one partition at one mount point, but any empty directory on one partition can be a mount point for another partition.

    GPT is a partition table and is not used for Linux specifically, but on any computer with UEFI - it defines how to find partitions on a disk, but not how they are formatted.

    ext4 is a filesystem - formatting a partition with ext4 means creating data structures that tell the OS where to find files and directories in the partition.

  • It's similar to how drive letters work in Windows: the partition you installed it on is C:\ and you can assign any other letter to any other partition.

    On Linux, the partition you installed it on is / and you can mount other partitions in any empty directory.

  • If you install your first distro without creating any partitions manually, the installer will probably create an EFI partition. Maybe it wouldn't need to create one on your specific system, but it will probably do it anyway.

  • You can create dedicated partitions for /home, but unless you know why it makes sense in your specific situation, you shouldn't.

    The data partition is just another partition that you can mount somewhere, for example /mnt/storage.

  • If the installer doesn't automatically create an EFI partition, you can create a small FAT16 or FAT32 partition (a few hundred MB should be enough).

    The swap partition is just a swap partition - that is the partition type you select in your partitioning tool.

    The storage partition can be any format you want. If you don't need to access it from Windows, just use ext4.

    Mount points are similar to drive letters, but more flexible. You can read these Wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fstab

  • There are no BIOS partitions - you may be confusing the term with the BIOS partition scheme, but that doesn't matter in this context "BIOS partitions" do exist, but they are irrelevant on modern machines - they are for booting GPT disks on systems that only support MBR disks.

    If you need an EFI partition, the first installer will create one. As for the sizes, the recommendation in the other comment makes sense to me (one ≈60 GB partition per distro, one swap partition and one partition for your personal files that uses the remaining space on the disk).

  • A swap partition doesn't have a filesystem - it has its own partition type and doesn't contain files. The installer might create one automatically or it might not - if it asks how large it should be, a good rule of thumb is to use the same size as your RAM.

    If that turns out not to be enough, you can create a swap file on a data partition later and if it's too large, you just wasted a few GB but usually that doesn't matter.

  • The first installer will install the bootloader automatically.

    It will also create a swap partition unless you tell it not to, and all distros will use all swap partitions by default, so you don't need more than one per disk.

    If you don't hibernate one distro and then boot another, sharing a swap partition isn't a problem.

  • There shouldn't be any significant difference between the GRUB versions that come with different distros, so the order in which you install the distros doesn't really matter.

    You can't install multiple distros on one partition, so you need at least one partition per distro.

  • I think the easier solution would be not to use hibernation - either shut the system down properly or use suspend-to-RAM.

    If everything works, the bootloader should be whichever GRUB version comes with the distro you install first and the other distros' installers should just add entries to boot them.

  • One thing that might matter is that if all distros use the same swap partition for hibernation, you shouldn't boot one distro after hibernating another or you might overwrite the saved RAM contents.

    If you use different swap partitions or files, you probably should still avoid writing to a partition that belongs to a distro that isn't actually shut down.

  • Adapter cards for one PCIe M.2 SSD are completely passive and work on every motherboard with PCIe. If the card has multiple M.2 slots, you need either a PCIe switch on the card or a motherboard that supports PCIe bifurcation.

    I upgraded an old machine that doesn't have PCIe 3.0 or M.2 slots with a Samsung 950 Pro in an adapter card and I haven't noticed any issues - the SSD only runs at PCIe 2.0 speeds, but that's fast enough for me.

    Sometimes plugging a PCIe card into one slot will cause fewer or no lanes to be allocated to another slot, so you should check your motherboard's manual before buying a new card.