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submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I just got a new laptop and installed Linux on it. I mainly run OpenSUSE.

Getting full encryption on both was a bit of a challenge and I had no idea what I'm doing. Will having the swap partition in the middle break things? Did I really need so many partitions (Mint and OpenSUSE don't show up in eachother's boot menu)?

I'm probably not gonna change this layout (because reinstallation seems like a pain) unless the swap partition's position is a problem. I'm just curious how many mistakes I made.

EDIT: I'm not upgrading my drive capacity. I do not need it.

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[-] data1701d@startrek.website 11 points 2 days ago

Scared

On a more serious note, as others have said, you'll probably burn through these weird storage limitations quickly.

Also, what do you mean by "sensitive matters" on Mint? Because almost any way you spin it, I feel like it's not a great idea:

  • If you're talking professional, confidential work with clients, keeping it on the same device where you do anything personal sounds like a terrible idea, and it's probably worth it to shell out for a dedicated device just for this.
  • If it's more personal things like government documents, medical records, and other things I'll neglect to name here, running a separate operating system just for those just feels like unnecessary paranoia and will cause you unnecessary trouble. If you're careful, it shouldn't be a problem - the major browsers prevent file access through protections against cross-site scripting.

Also, as I said in another comment here, please upgrade that drive before you put a lot of data on it. If you don't and you run out of storage later (a near-certainty on 256GB), you'll have to go through the effort of getting everything copied, which may include equipment purchases and several hours of your time when you could jut do it right now while your important files are still small enough to fit on a flash drive right now. Save yourself the future trouble.

Anyhow, I wish you happy Linux usage.

[-] Tenkard@lemmy.ml 35 points 3 days ago

I would create another couple of efi partitions, just to confuse attackers more

[-] phanto@lemmy.ca 84 points 3 days ago

Never more in my life have I wanted to send a stranger a larger hard drive.

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 days ago

The laptop it's replacing also bad just 256gb of storage.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 57 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I think the partitioning itself is fine, but I wouldn't have 3 operating systems on a 256 GB NVMe, because I'd be running out of space a lot.

if you won't ever use Windows, you can nuke it. Then I'd consider making one of the Linux ones a VM - if you're trying out that distro. That will cut down 12 partitions to 5.

Lastly, you can look into btrfs to make better use of space between (the current) p11 and p12: you can make them subvolumes that won't eat up each other's storage when not in use.

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[-] igemnace@lemmy.zip 16 points 3 days ago
  • You don't need multiple EFI system partitions! That's why Mint and OpenSUSE don't show up in each other's boot menu (or at least that's the first step, depending on your bootloader). The intention with the ESP is you put all EFI executables for dual-booting (and triple- and beyond) in there.
  • Swap partition is fine anywhere. But as an aside, you can also just use a swapfile. Makes it easy to change the size dynamically. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Swap#Swap_file
  • /dev/nvme0n1p6 I'd wonder why that's needed. /boot on /dev/nvme0n1p10 too, that's not strictly necessary.

None are game-breaking! You can just note these down for next time you have the itch to tinker.

[-] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

You do want windows EFI separate as it occasionally likes to turf the Linux efi entries. With opensuse it will probe foreign OS and add chainloader entries to point to the other EFI bootloaders. You set the OpenSUSE to load first and choose mint or windows from the grub menu

[-] stewarpt@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 days ago

Why keep the windows partition if you don't use it?

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago

In case I need it in some scenario which I can't even conceive of.

The pain of keeping it around will outweigh the pain of needing it and not having it.

Quick boot into windows to help a friend test something on your machine?

  • Twenty-five bajillion updates since you never logged in
  • Windows "helpfully" cleaning up your Linux bootloader
  • Any shared NTFS partition between windows and Linux is almost guaranteed to be left in a "dirty" state when windows shuts down, meaning you have to run ntfsfix before Linux will mount it again

And suddenly, that's where you'll be spending the whole afternoon. I agree with the others who say a VM is probably good enough.

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[-] AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Virtual Machine.

My laptop came with Windows 11, I nuked it and installed Linux before even booting lol.

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[-] verdigris@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago

Is there any reason? You're effectively wasting half the drive by using that space for OSes you almost never use.

If you ever happen to need Windows, which I don't see happening as you yourself can't imagine an actual use case, you can just go to the library or borrow a friend's computer or maybe use your phone.

As for Mint, do you just have it to experiment with? If you're just trying to try out other distros, a virtual machine or even live USBs are much easier ways to quickly try out new systems without having to clear actual partitions.

If you had much more storage then sure, waste some of it, but you're really gonna be missing that 120gb if you use your computer for... basically anything.

The order of the partitions basically doesn't matter at this point -- I think having a boot partition first used to be important for MBR schemes but I'm pretty sure in the UEFI era you can have them in whatever order. As others have mentioned, you could combine your EFI partitions, but doing so to an already installed system is slightly complex. You also could shrink some of your EFI and boot partitions, I'm not sure of the recommended sizes off the top of my head but I think they could be smaller. On the other hand, your swap partition should probably be bigger -- making it the same size as your RAM is a good rule of thumb and will enable hibernation (I think).

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Yep, gonna clone and delete Windows 11.

Library might work.

I'm using Mint for sensitive matters, I want to keep it separate from my daily driver.

I'll basically just be using this laptop for web-browsing.

I don't really use hibernation. I'll need to enable swap encryption though.

[-] verdigris@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

If you don't plan to expand the swap partition, I would recommend just deleting the swap partition -- you could either make it a new ext4 and use LVM to combine it with the shared storage, or if you're going to combine your EFI partitions you could grow your Mint partition to include both the SUSE EFI and the swap partition -- and using a swap file instead, as another commenter mentioned. You honestly really don't need swap space regardless with 16gb of RAM if you're really just using this to run a web browser, but you can easily set up a swap file if you want one.

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Some of the responses I got were about how the swap partition is useless, and someone else replied to them that they were wrong. I haven't responded to these people because I don't yet understand who's right. I'll use a swap file or just no swap altogether once I check for myself if the anti-swap people are nutters. I assume temporary files aren't saved to swap but instead to temp so I can't imagine what it's used for on an SSD.

I found yet another thing I'd need to manually install with OpenSUSE Leap (and at that point I may aswell use Arch with all it's documentation glory). I didn't have any of these issues with Ubuntu-based distros so I'm doing a fresh install with Kubuntu.

I'm gonna LVM it with two distros and a shared data partition.

[-] amju_wolf@pawb.social 1 points 2 days ago

Yep, gonna clone and delete Windows 11.

Why would you clone it first? Just nuke it if you don't plan on using it. It has no value. You can always install it from scratch.

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Doesn't matter anyway. It wouldn't fit on my USB so I shrunk the partition and now my copy of Windows 11 is bricked.

[-] gagootron@feddit.org 16 points 3 days ago

I recommend that you take a look at LVM. It can help you manage your partitions without much planning beforehand.

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[-] SitD@lemy.lol 8 points 3 days ago

nuke it 😎

[-] krolden@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 days ago

Why don't you delete windows

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago

I am afraid that in the future something I need will require Windows 11. Whether that be interacting with the government or maybe if I go back to university.

[-] dallen@programming.dev 9 points 3 days ago

Can’t speak to your exact machine but nowadays the license tends to be tied to the hardware.

If you are capable of manual partitioning then you should be able to reinstall Windows quickly if needed.

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[-] utopiah@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 days ago
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[-] gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com 7 points 3 days ago

I really don't think 60 GB will be enough for daily use unless you have your home folder on a separate drive, which it doesn't seem is the case from your screenshot.

I have mine on a separate drive and my system partition (150 GB) is half-full. Is there a reason for your 25 GB per Linux installation rule?

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[-] fushuan@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You just got a new laptop and it has 250 GB of disk space?? Are you mad???

My Pendrive has 256 GB!

[-] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I was looking for: Cheap, used, 1920p display, AMD CPU, 16gb RAM, presence of SSD, Linux bluetooth drivers, at least 2 USB ports, and a non-American brand. Storage capacity is something I'd only really care about on my gaming computer (or if I was still engaging in piracy).

[-] mio@lemmy.mio19.uk 3 points 3 days ago

Is the swap space unencrypted? If so it could potentially weaken overall system encryption

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[-] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I too think you should remove windows. But if you don't want to, take a clonezilla image of your hard drive now. Store it somewhere else of course. You then can always recover if this scheme gets weird.

Its the first thing I do when I get a new laptop. Then wipe windows. Then install Linux. If I have hardware issues I can simply restore windows for warranty.

In any case, I would pick one of those two Linux to be a primary. You don't want to get rid of mint or make it a VM. Ok third option: distrobox it.

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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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