Partition Sizing and Examples

For normal use we recommend ext3, it is the default file system for sidux and well maintained.

With the Partition-Manager GParted hard drives are partitioned and/or formatted. The program has a graphical interface and is self-explanatory.

Gparted can also shrink or move partitions and also NTFS partitions. Gparted is not yet fully developed and labels itself as experimental, but if you move on in an orderly way, you should not encounter any problems. See full documentation for gparted. Changes to ntfs-partitions can also be made with proprietary tools such as Partition Magic (TM) and Acronis (TM).

ALWAYS BACK-UP YOUR DATA!

Should a partition show up as mounted, we have to close the partition -manager and unmount the device (right click on the mounted device-icon on the desktop->unmount). Should you have a swap partition, unmount it with: "sudo swapoff -a" in a Konsole. When done, we can start the partition manager again. In principle, 5 GB is more than sufficient for a hd-install, but you won't have much fun with this. A reasonable minimum install should have 12 GB. For those new to linux, we suggest only 2 partitions for a start (root and swap), because this simplifies your first install quite a bit. It's better to establish an extra partition for /home.

Advanced users can also have additional partitions for /var, /tmp, ...etc, for special reasons. Going into detail here would take us too far off our path, though. You really should have a swap partition (equivalent to the windows swapfile, but is much more effective). For normal usage, the swap partition should be up to twice your ram.

For data-exchange with a Windows installation you must use vfat (fat32). [XFS is not supported and whomever wants to use XFS for / (root) must create an extra /boot partition (ext2) or use lilo (because grub doesn't work with xfs reliably). The installer at this point supports xfs on / only through editing the file ~/.siduxconf.]

Whomever creates more than 1 partition should write their names down for later! Having done all this, save the changes (the floppy icon) and close the partition-manager. Here are some simple examples for different hd-sizes and different types of use, everything rounded off.

Tryout-Config - 60GBfor a pc, where windows takes quite a bit of space

Disk	Size	Filesystem	Mountpoint/System
sda1	20GB	NTFS	WindowsXP
sda5	28.5 gig	FAT32	Data for Win and Linux
sda6	8GB	ext3	/
sda7	2 GB	Swap	Swap

TV and Video-PC - 200GB no Windows for big Files (e.g. Video)

Disk	Size	Filesystem	Mountpoint/System
sda1	8GB	ext3	/
sda5	6GB	ext3	/home
sda6	5GB	ext3	/var
sda7	168.5GB	ext2/3	/video
sda8	2 GB	Swap	Swap

Standard-PC with Windows 120GB to use the best from both worlds.

Disk	Size	Filesystem	Mountpoint/System
sda1	20GB	NTFS	WindowsXP
sda5	8GB	ext3	/
sda6	20GB	ext3	/home
sda7	68.5GB	FAT32	Data exchange WindowsXP-Linux
sda8	2 GB	Swap	Swap

Linux Gaming- and MediaPC 160GB

Disk	Size	Filesystem	Mountpoint/System
sda1	18GB	ext3	/
sda5	20GB	ext3	/home
sda6	28.5GB	ext3	/opt
sda7	90GB	ext3	/data
sda8	2GB	ext3	/var
sda9	2 GB	Swap	Swap

Linux and Windows on 20 GB

Disk	Size	Filesystem	Mountpoint/System
sda1	5GB	NTFS	Win-System
sda2	9.5 GB	FAT32	Windows-Programs and Data for Windows and Linux
sda5	5GB	ext3	/
sda6	1 GB	Swap	Swap