Partition sizes recommendation

Installing Zorin OS
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1

Hi everyone,
I'm looking to install Zorin on my pc alongside Windows but find myself questioning the sizes for partitions and was wondering if anyone has advice I could learn from.
I have a spare 2TB SSD which, apart from two windows games, is empty; if it is easier I can wipe the drive to give the full space to Zorin, but my plan at the moment is to keep a 300gb-ish NTFS partition for those games and then allocate the rest to Zorin. The issue is setting up the partition sizes. This is what I have planned at the moment:

•1gb EFI/boot
•120gb root, unsure if I should split var away too
•8gb swap
And home being the remainder.

I plan to use flatpaks where applicable, and as such have followed the general advice I've seen online for what can be considered a "comfortable" amount of space - but I have to admit I've never installed Linux on bare metal before apart from a raspberry pi :sweat_smile: , but I have played around in VMs for a while, so I'm a bit unsure. Does anyone have any suggestions or does this seem ample?

Thanks!

2

Welcome to the Forum!

So, You want to create a Dual-Boot System. Of Cource, You can create manually the Partitions, but You don't have to.

When You install Zorin, You will come to a Screen with the Installation Options:

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Bildschirmfoto vom 2024-04-16 12-09-131315×959 97.3 KB

You see there the first Option ''Install Zorin alongside Windows ...''. The Installer already detects that a Windows Installation exists. When You take the Option, the Installer makes everything for You automatically. The only Thing, You have to do is choosing in the next Step the Disc Space that You want use for Zorin; that's all. The Rest makes the Installer as I said automatically - including a Swap File.

For the Case, You want create it manually, make in Windows in the Disk Management free Space for Zorin. So, shrink there the Windows Partition. The free Space will be the Area where zorin will be installed.

then start the USB Stick with Zotin on it and when You come to the Installation Screen showed above, choose the Option ''something else''. There you have to make 2 Things:

I personally have used in the Past when I created a dual-Boot system every Time the ''Install Zorin alongside Windows'' Option because it is the more simpler and fast Way. But it is up to You what You want use.

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Hello, welcome to Zorin OS!

Those numbers look fine, plenty of room to run Zorin OS and Flatpak packages which can grow in size quickly.

Perhaps something I'd consider, considering that you have a pretty large drive, is extend the root partition to at least 200 GB. Just for good measure.

As for the swap partition, Zorin OS has a special dedicated file that effectively does the same thing, so you don't even have to create a dedicated partition just for that.

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Hi and welcome. If your rig has 8 Gb or more you shouldn't need any swap area, especially if installing to an SSD. Your 1 Gb for EFI is not needed 300 Mb is the norm but I would opt for 512 Mb. From experience you should not need more than 80 Gb for root, the rest for /home. I always have avoided 'Install alongside Windows'. I suspect if you went with this option it would attempt to install to your Windows drive. You could also take a look at EasyBCD from Neosmart, which now is compatible with Windows 10/11. I would avoid a separate /var partition. I chose this on a Devuan install and it soon filled up, preventing me from booting. I would recommend post install that you install Stacer to regularly clean your drive. Lastly you should set up TRIM on your Zorin install. Windows does this automatically, but you need to set it up as a cron job:

"To set a cron job for TRIM on an SSD in Ubuntu, first ensure your SSD supports TRIM by running sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda and checking for "Data Set Management TRIM supported". Then, create a script in the /etc/cron.daily/ directory. Use a text editor like nano to create the file: sudo nano /etc/cron.daily/trim. Paste the following script, which trims the root and home partitions and logs the output:

#!/bin/sh
LOG=/var/log/trim.log
echo "*** $(date -R) ***" >> $LOG
fstrim -v / >> $LOG
fstrim -v /home >> $LOG

Save the file with Ctrl+O, then exit with Ctrl+X. Make the script executable using sudo chmod a+x /etc/cron.daily/trim. This cron job will run daily, trimming unused blocks on the SSD to maintain performance and longevity. For systems using systemd, a default weekly fstrim.timer service is available and may be preferred over manual cron jobs."

Note, your secondary SSD might be listed as sdb or maybe referenced as nvmeX. Be sure you know which drive is which.

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Thank you for the in depth answer; I'll admit I didn't think about trim - good point. On a similar topic - would you recommend ext4 or BTRFS for an SSD? I did read that the nature of ext4 can reduce SSD lifespan; however I'm not sure if this is a thing of the past.
As for my windows partition, am I correct in the assumption that moving or formatting the partition at a later date to merge with my Linux partition may prove to be a bit complicated?
Many thanks again :+1:

6

I briefly had an SSD on a Dell Latitude E6500 and asked the same question to my local LUG. A member there said they formatted to Ext4 and had no issues for 6 years.

Personally I would not merge the two. If you want to share data, don't use the Windows Partition as files can become corrupted.

7

On trim:
systemd will handle trim. When enabled, it's run once a week.
How to check it's status. It may not be enabled by default.

[dmn@Tyana ~]$ systemctl status fstrim.timer
fstrim.timer - Discard unused filesystem blocks once a week
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer; enabled;
Active: active (waiting) since Wed 2025-09-17 18:28:18 MST; 1h 39min ago
Invocation: 8daec54b711f4d89835e9eed58cebe67
Trigger: Mon 2025-09-22 00:48:34 MST; 4 days left
Triggers: fstrim.service
Docs: man:fstrim

If you want to enable, there are a couple of commands to run in the termimal, but I don't remember them offhand.

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It appears systemd sets the weekly check automatically:

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I did have a think about this, has the NTFS3 driver not been improved, or is it still finnicky? I would probably look at formatting my external HDD to exfat if it is still a pain to work with.

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I'm not aware of NTFS3g being finicky, but where problems can arise is if you are accessing and writing to the partition that holds Windows. At the end of the day, if you can access data from an EXFAT partition from either OS, then stick with what you feel comfortable with. As my dad used to say, "If in doubt, don't."

These days (not always possible on notebooks), if I were to dual boot it would be on separate drives, and I still prefer mechanical drives over SSD's, as they are what I am most comfortable with. I tried to put Zorin Education on an M.2 a few years back for my eldest who was working at the time, but it kept crashing, and ended up putting MX-Linux Plasma on it, but that was short lived as they needed Windows 11 putting on their main Desktop as a secondary drive was failing.