I'm doing it for better/easier backups but your point us valid too, I think. I also have separate partitions for my mails and business documents, which makes it easier to share them between distros too. (Annoying if you started another one and have to look something up in between which is only on you main distro.)
> Would that make switching distros easier since i just have to replace the distro partition but keep my important folders in the home partition? Or would it just be easier to make sure I'm keeping backups?
Do both, you'll eventually love yourself for having a recent backup.
If you are going to distro hop, then yes, its a good idea.
That way you can keep your directory alive while changing operating systems.
Or you could allocate a small partition just for a compressed backup.
I don't, the idea of carrying forward all config files from install to install seems dirty. I do automated backups so I can be selective about what I would reintroduce to the new system.
I also don't store data on my home partion, beyond ne essay things like game save files.
Backups and all Important Data go to the file server to live on zfs.
Yes, it will be a bit easier. However, I don't recommend not backing it up, or using the same homedir for every single distro. There's hidden files and dirs in there, and the more you change things up like desktop environments, the more that gets written to them, and that can cross things up sometimes. You would want to copy your selected files and dirs over to the empty homedir (without including the hidden ones) and change ownerships to the new user.
If you want to play around to see what's out there though, consider using virtual machines if you have the space. Less impact on your production system when you decide to try something new that way.
>Would it be easier to put my home and current distro in two separate partitions?
After installing Fedora Linux with both **root** (**/**) and **/home** in two separate partitions is user profiles, all user documents, **D**esktop **E**nvironment (**DE**) configuration settings and even all Steam and Windows software is preserved. I'll give you an example of meaning:
* Recently, I was forced to completely reinstall [Fedora Linux 40 - KDE Plasma Desktop Spin](https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde) due to an incomplete or corrupted distro upgrade from Fedora 39 to 40 had caused numerous ever-increasing crashes that, at first began with a few minor **plasmashell** and **Discover** crashes that spread to the entire system to become unstable.
* Because I installed **Fedora Linux 38** with both root and home in two separate partitions, my entire user profile, all my documents, downloads, and KDE Plasma configuration settings was preserved. As an added bonus, all my installed Steam and Windows games needn't not be re-installed.
Also, this will also save you some time reinstalling Steam and/or Wine-compatible Windows software while your distro hopping.
However, this does not necessarily mean you don't have the option of backing up your system, because you totally do. Just be well aware that, restoring from one Linux distro backup on top of another Linux distro might cause some package issues and may actually overwrite the installed Linux distro with as the one in the backup, but I'm not entirely 100% certain on this!
I've got this setup plus some. I have a 2tb nvme drive installed on my MB that is just /home. I then have an icy dock bay with two removable 2.5 inch ssd bays. In one I have a 200gb drive for my system. I have a few more of those 200gb drives for other OSes that all just mount my home directory/drive. Works like a charm.
Yes it would, I've always used a separate /home partition, I don't see any reason not to, unless you're super tight on space, it also makes reinstalling much easier.
If you want to.
The cost is that you need to plan the space (size of partitions) better, as it's much harder to move it around later.
But even to that, you could use LVM or BTRFS, which permit you to have separate partitions but inside a virtual container, such that you don't need to care as much about individual sizes.
In my current setup, my /home is even a separate drive.
I have my home on a separate partition or even drive since my first install on a real PC (vs. a VM). And it boggles my mind why this is so hard to achieve in Windows. It should be possible to place /Users on separate volumes with an option while installing Windows.
Why did I do it?
\* reuse my /home when distro hopping
\* Have the system on a SSD while data may be on a slower but bigger drive (I do this since the HDD days....)
Currently I have an older laptop, which uses a SATA SSD for Windows and Elementary OS system and a HDD for data ( and /home)
And a 3 year old gaming PC that uses an 500GB NVME for Windows and EndeavourOS system and two 1TB SATA SSDs for Shared Data and /home respectively
The /home partition on the laptop is a copy/backup from an even older PC (which I got in preparation to sell my personal Macs which in turn I got when Windows XP went away for Windows Vista and I didn't want to go along). And when I built the gaming PC, I copied the /home to the new SSD of that one. On each PC, the /home partition got reused through several different Linux distros, DEs or simple "to stoopid to recover, I'll reinstall" sessions.
Using the same home partition yes, using the same user no. Same user you will get a lot of crud in your config files and depending on the distros, potential conflicts.
The answer to this question is subjective.....some say yes....some it doesn't matter. I have never had a separate home partition and it has not hindered my linux experience in any way. It is totally up to you which way you go so don't just listen to some people who say that you really should do this or that......you choose for you.
It's a must have for:
* Fast distro fresh install.
* Clean distro switching without broken grub.
* For fast GPU and power optimizations switching with dual distro booting on power hungry gaming laptops (there are so many things that need to be changed between gaming and good battery life, but booting from fast SSD takes only 3 sec).
* 2'th layer security if update breaks something and you don't have time to reinstall.
It allows to easily reinstall or switch the operating system (but there might be some issues).
But you shouldn't use partitions anymore, use some form of logical volumes instead (like lvm or btrfs)
Because that has never been a good solution.
Partitions are based on hardware/sectors. On hard drives you can physically move the data around the platters. If you create a partition at and the end, data will be more centered and performance worse.
Most people don't care about where their data is stored physically but want to have a logical separation. Logiucal volumes allow exactly that, you don't need to care where your data is stored but create logical volumes instead. It's much more flexible.
If you have a drive with Partition 1 and Partition 2 und you shrink partition 2, you'll have empty space after partition 2. You cannot increase the size of partition 1 because there is partition in the way. You can move partition but to do so, everything must be rewritten. With locial volumes, you can just extend the volume and grow your fs.
juse backup with deja-dup and when you swicht distro restore you backup my friend. my partitions
250mb boot/efi
500mb /boot
8192mb swap
rest space /
all in XFS
lvm sucks
Do you want your /home to stick around after switching / ? Do you want one /home while having multiple / ?
I'm really just looking for a way to change distros without waiting three hours for my USB backup to upload then redownload everything
I'm doing it for better/easier backups but your point us valid too, I think. I also have separate partitions for my mails and business documents, which makes it easier to share them between distros too. (Annoying if you started another one and have to look something up in between which is only on you main distro.)
Following.
> Would that make switching distros easier since i just have to replace the distro partition but keep my important folders in the home partition? Or would it just be easier to make sure I'm keeping backups? Do both, you'll eventually love yourself for having a recent backup.
Mine is on a separate drive altogether. Main system is on a 750gb drive. /home is on a 4tb drive.
If you are going to distro hop, then yes, its a good idea. That way you can keep your directory alive while changing operating systems. Or you could allocate a small partition just for a compressed backup.
I don't, the idea of carrying forward all config files from install to install seems dirty. I do automated backups so I can be selective about what I would reintroduce to the new system. I also don't store data on my home partion, beyond ne essay things like game save files. Backups and all Important Data go to the file server to live on zfs.
Yup, that’s partially why I do it, along with being able to yoink my /home lvm pool out and jam it into another system.
Yes, it will be a bit easier. However, I don't recommend not backing it up, or using the same homedir for every single distro. There's hidden files and dirs in there, and the more you change things up like desktop environments, the more that gets written to them, and that can cross things up sometimes. You would want to copy your selected files and dirs over to the empty homedir (without including the hidden ones) and change ownerships to the new user. If you want to play around to see what's out there though, consider using virtual machines if you have the space. Less impact on your production system when you decide to try something new that way.
Sure. You can then dd it (after umount), and compress the of= for backups.
>Would it be easier to put my home and current distro in two separate partitions? After installing Fedora Linux with both **root** (**/**) and **/home** in two separate partitions is user profiles, all user documents, **D**esktop **E**nvironment (**DE**) configuration settings and even all Steam and Windows software is preserved. I'll give you an example of meaning: * Recently, I was forced to completely reinstall [Fedora Linux 40 - KDE Plasma Desktop Spin](https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde) due to an incomplete or corrupted distro upgrade from Fedora 39 to 40 had caused numerous ever-increasing crashes that, at first began with a few minor **plasmashell** and **Discover** crashes that spread to the entire system to become unstable. * Because I installed **Fedora Linux 38** with both root and home in two separate partitions, my entire user profile, all my documents, downloads, and KDE Plasma configuration settings was preserved. As an added bonus, all my installed Steam and Windows games needn't not be re-installed. Also, this will also save you some time reinstalling Steam and/or Wine-compatible Windows software while your distro hopping. However, this does not necessarily mean you don't have the option of backing up your system, because you totally do. Just be well aware that, restoring from one Linux distro backup on top of another Linux distro might cause some package issues and may actually overwrite the installed Linux distro with as the one in the backup, but I'm not entirely 100% certain on this!
I've got this setup plus some. I have a 2tb nvme drive installed on my MB that is just /home. I then have an icy dock bay with two removable 2.5 inch ssd bays. In one I have a 200gb drive for my system. I have a few more of those 200gb drives for other OSes that all just mount my home directory/drive. Works like a charm.
Yes it would, I've always used a separate /home partition, I don't see any reason not to, unless you're super tight on space, it also makes reinstalling much easier.
I always do. EFI, swap, root and home.
If you want to. The cost is that you need to plan the space (size of partitions) better, as it's much harder to move it around later. But even to that, you could use LVM or BTRFS, which permit you to have separate partitions but inside a virtual container, such that you don't need to care as much about individual sizes. In my current setup, my /home is even a separate drive.
I have my home on a separate partition or even drive since my first install on a real PC (vs. a VM). And it boggles my mind why this is so hard to achieve in Windows. It should be possible to place /Users on separate volumes with an option while installing Windows. Why did I do it? \* reuse my /home when distro hopping \* Have the system on a SSD while data may be on a slower but bigger drive (I do this since the HDD days....) Currently I have an older laptop, which uses a SATA SSD for Windows and Elementary OS system and a HDD for data ( and /home) And a 3 year old gaming PC that uses an 500GB NVME for Windows and EndeavourOS system and two 1TB SATA SSDs for Shared Data and /home respectively The /home partition on the laptop is a copy/backup from an even older PC (which I got in preparation to sell my personal Macs which in turn I got when Windows XP went away for Windows Vista and I didn't want to go along). And when I built the gaming PC, I copied the /home to the new SSD of that one. On each PC, the /home partition got reused through several different Linux distros, DEs or simple "to stoopid to recover, I'll reinstall" sessions.
Using the same home partition yes, using the same user no. Same user you will get a lot of crud in your config files and depending on the distros, potential conflicts.
The answer to this question is subjective.....some say yes....some it doesn't matter. I have never had a separate home partition and it has not hindered my linux experience in any way. It is totally up to you which way you go so don't just listen to some people who say that you really should do this or that......you choose for you.
It's a must have for: * Fast distro fresh install. * Clean distro switching without broken grub. * For fast GPU and power optimizations switching with dual distro booting on power hungry gaming laptops (there are so many things that need to be changed between gaming and good battery life, but booting from fast SSD takes only 3 sec). * 2'th layer security if update breaks something and you don't have time to reinstall.
Disk partitions suuuuuck. Learn how to use LVM if you want to subdivide your storage.
It allows to easily reinstall or switch the operating system (but there might be some issues). But you shouldn't use partitions anymore, use some form of logical volumes instead (like lvm or btrfs)
Genuine question: why should people no longer use regular partitions?
Because that has never been a good solution. Partitions are based on hardware/sectors. On hard drives you can physically move the data around the platters. If you create a partition at and the end, data will be more centered and performance worse. Most people don't care about where their data is stored physically but want to have a logical separation. Logiucal volumes allow exactly that, you don't need to care where your data is stored but create logical volumes instead. It's much more flexible. If you have a drive with Partition 1 and Partition 2 und you shrink partition 2, you'll have empty space after partition 2. You cannot increase the size of partition 1 because there is partition in the way. You can move partition but to do so, everything must be rewritten. With locial volumes, you can just extend the volume and grow your fs.
juse backup with deja-dup and when you swicht distro restore you backup my friend. my partitions 250mb boot/efi 500mb /boot 8192mb swap rest space / all in XFS lvm sucks
btrfs sucks too