Manual partitioning or

[zenman]

Dear,

I am just wondering: what would be the difference between "clean" installation and manual partitioning?

Does Zorin OS do good job if I go straight forward without bothering to have swap and other partitions? Do you recommend just to go: ERASE... and install Zorin OS?

Thank you!

[zenzen]

I assume that by "clean installation" you mean using the entire drive. The only difference is that you must choose and specify how much and which sections of the drive to use, although even this is neatly presented to you.

The only question is: do you need to use reserve space for other things like additional operating systems, swap or extra storage? If not, then go ahead and use the full drive during installation. You'll always be able to create those partitions at a later point if you need to. The most important consideration is whether or not you want to dual-boot i.e. have multiple operating systems, especially with Windows.

[zenman]

No Windows -- never more THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

[zenzen]

Yep, no worries. You'll be fine with the full disk installation, and as mentioned you can always change things around later. Make sure to read the help pages for details on how to things like creating the bootable USB, verifying the integrity of the ISO file and so on. Good luck!

EDIT: may want to checkout this walkthrough as well:

[HOW TO] Partition & Install Zorin 16

This step-by-step guide will allow you to partition your hard drive (HDD, SSD, NVMe) so that installation goes a little more smoothly. This will work for a multi-boot system as well, but you will have to resize your Windows partition first and you will be using the Windows Boot Manager EFI partition instead of creating one. Otherwise, partitioning is pretty much the same. Please be sure to perform the steps in Before You Install prior to attempting any of these changes. Mistakes and rushing …

[swarfendor437]

Just remember if partitioning manually to an SSD, no swap file/swap area is needed.

[marko94]

Hi, dont want open new thread, so I hope it is ok to write here.

I am preparing for new Z17 release, so I need clean install.

I dont like default partitoning, so planning manual.
Is this correct way :

• efi partition

• root partition (ext4)

• home partition (ext4)

For swap I thought about zram ?

I thought maybe about btrfs but not so sure about it, also not so much guides and support on Ubuntu based distros

[Aravisian]

@marko94

Is this correct way :

Yes, that setup will work.

@marko94

I thought maybe about btrfs but not so sure about it

Using BRTFS can be tricky and can also cause unexpected conflicts and issues currently. I would not go that route unless a user is very sure about what they are doing.

[zenzen]

There are a couple of cool videos that I would like to try soon on BTRFS with Debian. Not sure how well it translates to ZorinOS but hopefully it can at least give a somewhat useful reference:

Debian 12 Bookworm Minimal Install w/BTRFS

Debian Bullseye install with BTRFS Subvolumes

[marko94]

Looks nice, but i installed it with ext4.. will see how it goes