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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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One single partition for Linux versus using a partition table? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Heya folks, some people online told me I was doing partitions wrong, but I’ve been doing it this way for years. Since I’ve been doing it for years, I could be doing it in an outdated way, so I thought I should ask.

I have separate partitions for EFI, /, swap, and /home. Am I doing it wrong? Here’s how my partition table looks like:

FAT32: EFI
BTRFS: /
Swap: Swap
Ext4: /home

I set it up this way so that if I need to reinstall Linux, I can just overwrite / while preserving /home and just keep working after a new install with very few hiccups. Someone told me there’s no reason to use multiple partitions, but several times I have needed to reinstall the OS (Linux Mint) while preserving /home so this advice makes zero sense for me. But maybe it was just explained to me wrong and I really am doing it in an outdated way. I’d like to read what you say about this though.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How does that work with you're installing a new system? Do the subvolumes just show up like partitions?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

In tools like lsblk? Nope. They appear as directories, usually in the top-level subvolume, which typically isn't mounted anywhere in the system.

Then you just create mount entries in /etc/fstab just like you would with partitions, this time just using the subvol= option as mentioned above. I don't know if there are any installers that do this for you. Archwiki -- as usual -- has good documentation on this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

So, it doesn't sound like it would be useful for me, since the reason why I have separate partitions in the first place is so that I can re-install a distro or install a new distro without having to back up /home first.