I bought Zorin OS 18 Pro for my wife's new laptop and it runs perfectly. So I decided to install this distro on my PC, too. I'm a Linux beginner (only got to know Mint for some months and tried out openSuse but that did not work).
In Mint I installed Steam and some games for my son - I want to install these on Zorin, too (important for the questions below).
I have a 4 TB disk (to install Zorin on) and an addition 2 TB - so I have plenty of wiggle room for partitioning.
Questions:
Swap-Partition: In the video, the guy says that no swap partition is needed.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of a dedicated swap partition. I have 32 GB RAM - to permanently block 32 + 2 GB won't hurt me too much (see above).
The guy says, that having a dedicated root partition will make reinstalling or even distro hopping and fixing the system later much easier.
Does that mean, that one can install a new system on the root partition without touching the home partition / the personal data?
What are the advantages or disadvantages partitioning the disk in three (boot, root, home)?
2.1. I can't find the data of the Steam-games in my Mint system (stupid). Where will Steam store these? In the home or the root partition? Installing games need a lot of disc space - the root partition might be too small if the data is stored there.
2.2. What kind of data will be stored in the root partition besides the system itself at all? E. g. if I install flatpacks (or snaps) where will the data be stored? Root? Home?
Despite the boot partition needs to have the file system "EFI System Partition" what are the advantages or disadvantages of the other file systems in root and home partition? In the video the guy chooese Ext4 (I have no dual boot, no Windows will ever touch my system again).
I can't advise on Steam as I have been unsuccessful because I wanted to use a non-Steam game that crashes on boot, which I suspect is down to Anti-cheat software. So firstly be aware not to run any Windows game with Anti-cheat. Why? Because GNU/Linux uses a conversion process, like WINE, this adds a delay to any input you make with mouse or keyboard and EA Games being the worst offender misinterprets the delay as a player using some form of cheat and the player is then permanently banned. (I referred to this a long time ago and referenced a YouTube video that explained it better than I can.)
Partitioning.
I have never owned anything internally of the magnitude of your drives. Swap is not installed if you are using SSD's but if using HDD's then I would normally advise to have a 'swap' partition. Having said that I suspect you won't need that.
This is how I partition:
Create a 512 Mb partition, formatted to FAT32, and mark it as '/efi/boot'.
Create a system ('root') partition of 80 Gb, format to Ext4 FS and mark it as '/'.
In your case, I would not bother with swap, but then create a final partition of '/home', also formatted as Ext4 FS.
Ext4 FS is a journaling system (think of it as similar, but not the same as, NTFS, also a journaling system). Because it is a journaling system, the timeout for the GRUB menu should never be reduced to less than 5 seconds or you could corrupt the system.
I would also recomnend you install Timeshift and use '/home' to place the snapshots should you need to restore the system if things should go wrong such as a Linux kernel update not play nice with your system.
Should you ever have to reinstall, or eventually need to install a newer version of Zorin, then yes it is good to have a separate /home so that you just install the system to '/'. You would just have to mark the '/home' partition as /home but ensure not format the partition. Marking (labeling) /home is so that the Partition Table is kept up to date. Never choose create new partition table when reinstalling as it would wipe out your /home partition.
Lastly GNU/Linux uses Mebibytes (Mib) and on my recent install of PCLOS Debian I decided to use this useful conversion tool:
Nearly forgot. I don't use Flatpak or Snaps as they add bloatware. The last time I used Zorin I removed both flatpak, snap and gnome-software (Software) and only use Synaptic. That's why I prefer PCLOS Debian.
Don't forget to download the Unofficial Manual for Zorin 18 Core I authored:
Thank you for the reply and the links, I will have a closer look at!
If I get that right, you recommend three partitions as the guy in the video promoted for more experienced users (though having only the home partition is perfectly fine).
Flatpak: Yeah, I already learned that you must love or avoid them. For me as recent Windows-refugee with limited technical knowledge, flatpaks are just fine. As for now I want to keep it simple.
Anyway back to partitioning:
My main concern is, that much of the data is stored in the root partition which then seems to be quite small at 80 Gb.
So where will flatpaks (and maybe snaps or installed .deb packages or whatever software I will install in the future) stored to?
My PC is a mnitower. I constantly kept updating it over the years (RAM, Graphic-card, the two SSD). I need much disk space because I mainly use the PC for developing and storing RAW photos from my camera. Besides switching from Lightroom to Darktable was a bigger challange not the OS itself.
Well there is no upper limit really. If you are using GPT partitioning there is no limit. The 80 Gb bit is for standard install for a 1 Tb HDD or less. For mbr the maximum is 2 Tib so if partitioning with GPT you can make '/' any size you want.
I don't know enough about flatpak and how much space they use other than a lot more than APT, the standard packaging engine. The only other comment about flatpak is that it runs outside of the system, the same (but different) as an App Image. Updates have to be run separately from the normal system updates because flatpaks are 'sandboxed' (but not really in the truest form of sandboxing from what I have read online and can carry their own security risks.
If You want to keep it simple with creating the Partitions, I would suggest the following Way:
Choose during Installation the ''Something else'' Option''. Then choose the Drive where Zorin should be installed on. Create 2 Partitions:
1.: And EFI Partition with 300mb
2.: For the Rest of the Drive take the Mount Point / and format it to ext4
That would be the easiest Way in my Opinion. Yes, You can create more seperate Partitions but in this Way, you can avoid to have limited Space in one. You could that theoretically adjust afterwards, yes. But so, You don't have to do that.
Because of Flatpak and Snap: Yes, they add additional Packages during Installation - in Case of Flatpak for Example Runtime Environment - which leads to needing Disk Space. But at the End counts what suits You: When Snaps and Flatpak work for You, use it. If not, don't use it. That is up to you. I personally use .deb and Flatpak and I'm fine with that.
Because of Swap: When You only have a limited amount of RAM, Swap can be nice to have. But then would be the Point if as Partition or as File. But in Your Case with 32Gig's of RAM, I would think, You don't need an extra Swap Partition.
Does anybody know where the data of installed flatpacks actually is stored to - to the root or the home partition? Where exactly?
In Windows when I installed any software, I mostly was able to choose a directory where to install the files to. That's what I'm used to. In Mint (and Zorin) while installing flatpacks the software manager never asks where to put the files to.
Same with Steam - in Linux I can just click install. But so far I didn't find out where the files actually are stored to.
That's why I'm asking. If the files are stored to the root partition, it might be a good idea to create a bigger one.
I think I'll go for three partitions but then I think 80 GB are somehow small when Zorin alone needs some 30 GB or so (for e. g. the installation of some Steam games are very demanding in terms of disk space they need, and some flatpacks are quite big, too).
I just checked my tablet running Ubuntu. I have only a few flatpaks installed on that one such as LibreOffice, Threema desktop App, Betterbird, XnView, Dolphin and 2/3 more (system wide) - all not very big but the flatpak folder has a size of 6.6 GB though.
So, it's stored in root partition, so more size would be better, I assume.
See, in Windows I liked to control where data is stored to - I never used the Windows-System "Programs" ... e. g. installed software not even to the C:\ drive but e. g. to D:\MyOwnSoftware\Photosoftware\RAW_Converter. So most of the data was just there.
Now I'm confused no knowing in which folder the files are stored.
"Flatpak can operate on system-wide and per-user installations. System-wide installations end up in /var/lib/flatpak, while per-user installations end up in $HOME/.local/share/flatpak."
From that link I included in my last post.
@PhilippHr Having Programs not in C:/ can lead to issues as Program registry files still get placed in the registry. A technical guy at the company where I worked at when I was a self-employed IT contractor setup NT4 workstations like that. A machine fell over and it meant all the software had to be reinstalled with the system. One thing I did in Windows was to move my Documents and Settings folder to D:.
