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submitted 1 year ago by Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

Hello all, sorry for such a newbish question, as I should probably know how to properly partition a hard drive, but I really don't know where to start. So what I'm looking to do is install a Debian distro, RHEL, and Arch. Want to go with Mint LMDE, Manjaro, and Fedora. I do not need very much storage, so I don't think space is an issue. I have like a 500+ something GB ssd and the few things that I do need to store are in a cloud. I pretty much use my laptop for browsing, researching, maybe streaming videos, and hopefully more programming and tinkering as I learn more; that's about all... no gaming or no data hoarding.

Do I basically just start off installing one distro on the full hard drive and then when I go to install the others, just choose the "run alongside" option? or would I have to manually partition things out? Any thing to worry about with conflicts between different types of distros, etc.? hoping you kind folks can offer me some simple advice on how to go about this without messing up my system. It SEEMS simple enough and it might be so, but I just don't personally know how to go about it lol. Thanks alot!!

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[-] Gurfaild@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Usually you create an entry in /etc/fstab that tells the system which partition should be mounted where. I'd do that in each distro once you have installed all of them.

[-] Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

But how do you know which partition should be mounted wear and Im sorta confused by that statement. Like what do you mean by "where"? Aren't they all on the same hard drive, so wouldn't they all just mount to your drive?

[-] Gurfaild@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I understand. Would I mount all partitions to root? also I just thought about something; what about gpt format? I know that is used for linux but where does that come in? like are ext4 and gpt the same types of things or different types of formats for different things?

[-] Gurfaild@feddit.de 2 points 1 year 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.

[-] Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Ahh ok I understand the filesystem types but still darn confused about the mount points. So the first distro I should mount to root??? then how could I partition the next distros in empty partitions that don't have directories yet (since theres no distro on them yet). Sorry, just getting a lil confused on some parts

[-] Gurfaild@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Mount points are specific to one install - for example, you can mount your Manjaro root partition as /mnt/manjaro on Fedora. From every distro's perspective, the partition it is installed on is /.

You seem to be mixing up the locations of partitions and mount points - a partition is somewhere on a disk and a mount point is basically a sign that points to it, and every distro can have different signs that point to the same thing.

[-] Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Ok I'm following. that doesn't make sense to me to make the mount points for one distro inside another. I dont understand that. In my mind, it seems like the mount points would all be to the bootloader? but again, I dont know much about this stuff lol

[-] Gurfaild@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

You only need mount points in each distro for partitions that you want to be able to access from that distro. If you don't need access to your Arch system files from Debian, don't mount the Arch partition in Debian.

But if you have a partition that you want to access from multiple distros, you don't need to use the same mountpoint in each distro - just like a USB flash drive can be E:\ on one Windows computer and H:\ on another - that is just a name and the files on it are the same.

[-] Macaroni9538@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for all your help. I have a feeling that once I start the process, things will become more clear as Im actually doing it

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
48 points (92.9% liked)

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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