Should I make partitions like creator of tutorial

Hello. I will get new computer which I ordered. He will be totally empty (without partitions). I know that I must make one partition for OS Zorin and other for my data. I’ve found that one man who created tutorial made this:

  • /boot = 2 GB (ext4 file system)
  • /home = 20 GB (ext4 file system)
  • / = 10 GB (ext4 file system)
  • /var = 7 GB (ext4 file system)
  • Swap = 2 GB (ext4 file system)

Should I make all types of partitions or boot and home partitions are enough?

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Hello David.
I am not sure which tutorial you are referring to.
Have you looked at @swarfendor437 's unofficial manual for Zorin 15, which includes advice on partitions and installation.

Will your new computer have a SSD or HDD ?
The EXT4 file system is journalling type and will not be good for your new SSD if you have one of those in place of a HDD. If you have SSD then use a non-journalling file system e.g. EXT2 to save wear to your SSD.

I have always installed Zorin with these partitions:
/ (root)
/home
swap

Note: your swap partition should ideally be set as 2x RAM capacity of your computer. e.g. 4GB RAM then 8GB swap.

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In addition to what @zabadabadoo wrote, if you have UEFI turned on, then for EFI/ESP use 50 MB.

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Hi, carmar,

I have a similar question (or perhaps the same question). I’ve looked at the instructions on partitioning in swarfendor437’s manual, as well as your instructions. When installing Zorin, why wouldn’t we let the installer do whatever it does by default? That is, what’s the reason for choosing “Something else,” and then making these partitions manually? I can’t find an explanation in the forum. Thanks in advance for your help.

Control of partitions is all I can say.
I first installed Linux on my desktop and since I was new to it, I tested it on my smallest drive, 75 GB. Given the small drive, I found that the ‘something else’ option allowed space management, so that is all I used. I have never even tried the other option(s) since this method allowed me to maximize my home space.

I’m not saying the other methods won’t optimize your space, I’m saying I don’t know and didn’t have the need to try them. Sorry, that’s probably not much of an answer.

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Same here, the 'something else' method is what I have always done as I know it works. I had to squeeze Zorin partitions into an even smaller disk space, so size of each partition had to be set precisely from the very start.

Thanks, carmar and zabadabadoo.

As far as I can tell, what the installer did by default was to install root and home as folders in a single partition. (In fact, all of Zorin appears to be installed in a single partition. But this structure might be connected with dual-booting with Windows in another partition …)

Hi, carmar and zabadabadoo,

I have a further question. When partitioning during installation, does the order of the partitions matter? Should it be root (/), home (/home), and then swap? And does it matter whether the partitions are primary or logical? (My understanding is that the “logical” option actually creates an extended partition filled with a single logical sub-partition.) Thanks.

No, the order doesn’t matter.
The answer in this thread seems to explain well: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1207747/whats-the-use-of-having-just-one-logical-partition-an-extended-partition-conta